Wicked Game
by Niente Zero
Summary: Fraser is drawn into a maze of undercover intrigue in the service of his country. Who is the enemy and who can be trusted? What is it with brunettes, anyway? And how will Fraser survive this wicked game? Rated T for strong language and violence.
1. Foreword and Prologue

**Foreword:**

_This story is a sequel to my previous story, **Without My Hat**, and is set just after **Juliet is Bleeding,** in season two. However, it definitely strays from the canon universe and down a different timeline. I made a lot of artistic decisions around this story based on the evident desire from my dear readers, who have always been very supportive, to read something a bit longer than my usual brisk eight chapters and an epilogue. I hope that the story will bring some pleasure and entertainment, at least in equal measure to the effort it's been for me to stretch my wings and produce something broader in scope. There are some chapters in the story that I would consider darker than my usual writing, but rest assured that as ever, I will restore all the key players to comfort by the time we come to the end of the road!_

_I owe positively profuse thanks to both Vic32 and Hanson's Angel for midwifing this story into existence. Without their support and critical reading, I would have stalled out around chapter 11, if not sooner. This story is for them. In a more general sense, as always, thank you to the readers and reviewers who have kept me encouraged and hopeful that what I'm writing brings some beauty to the world._

**Prologue:**

Ray Vecchio sat at his desk in the almost-dark bullpen scrubbing his eyes with the back of his hands. It was way past quitting time and there was no reason for him to be there, but there was really nowhere else to be, either. He didn't want to go home to the loud family who were not talking about Irene Zuko, loudly not talking about her. He couldn't go hang out with his unofficial partner because said unofficial partner had done the most astonishing thing and taken a powder right after the funeral. Left a message on his voicemail, something about a sick friend up in BF-NWT. 'Yeah, well, good riddance to him.' Ray thought, holding the hurt to his chest as the only damn thing he could afford to feel about that whole mess.

He nearly jumped when his phone rang.

"Yeah, this is Ray." It was nothing like the correct way to answer the department phones, but that really wasn't bothering Ray right now.

"Ray."

Oh. Benny.

"What's up, Benny?" Ray spoke coldly.

"I just - I didn't want to go off without speaking to you. I know that it's a bad time for me to leave, but there are some things that I am obligated to take care of."

"It's fine." Ray replied.

"I wanted you to understand that I wouldn't choose to leave at a time like this." Fraser said.

Ray sat up straighter. Oh, great... that didn't sound good at all.

"However, I have to make the best of a bad situation. I have to be here to help and I could use some rest and relaxation. There are some people here I haven't seen in a while."

The way Fraser said that had the "true but not true" that Ray was getting really good at distinguishing in Fraser's tones. Sure, Benny needed some R&R -but why did Ray think that wasn't really in the picture? And who was with him that he hadn't seen in a while?

"Sure, Benny. Take it easy up there. Got anything in mind?" Ray fished carefully. If Benny was trying to tell him something but was being overheard, he didn't want to make the situation worse.

"Ah, well. You remember Mark? I thought I'd get some skating in. We had so much fun playing hockey together that time. Perhaps I'll get my skates out tonight."

Ray heard truth and not truth again in that. So, Benny, want to meet up where we skated before? You're still in Chicago? Ray rubbed his forehead. Sounded a lot like trouble, and trouble that Fraser apparently wanted his help with.

"Yeah, you do that, sounds great." Ray said. "I remember." He didn't say 'I'll be there.' Never knew how much was being heard.

Ray heard a voice in the background and then Fraser spoke again.

"Well, I have to go now. I just wanted you to understand I wouldn't leave at a time like this if it wasn't necessary, all right, Ray?"

"I got it." Ray said. 'Hell, Benny, what are you mixed up in?' Ray thought futilely. The line went dead.

**Stay tuned for chapter one, coming soon!  
**


	2. Chapter 1: An Offer You Can't Refuse

**Chapter One - An Offer You Can't Refuse**

The nicest thing about the cheap hotel room that Fraser was sitting in was that it was only two miles from the park where he'd just given Ray a vague suggestion that he'd meet him. Fraser wished heartily that he'd been able to specify a time or make it clearer what he wanted, but he thought Ray had got the message. He hung up the phone and looked at the two people sitting on the other dingy twin bed in the room.

"Satisfied?" Corporal Dolenz, irritating plainclothes member of the RCMP, asked.

"Yes, thank you, kindly." Fraser said. "I don't think that Ray would have quietly accepted that I had left without speaking to him personally." He rolled his head gently from one shoulder to the other, easing the tension in his neck with a loud crack.

Things had been bad enough between him and Ray that very possibly Ray would have believed that he'd just go like that. Fraser hoped not. But whatever background briefing Dolenz had on his partnership with Ray was apparently enough to convince Dolenz of the expedience of allowing Fraser to make the phone call.

Now he'd just have to wait until he was left alone to sleep and sneak out of the hotel room. This situation was not something he wanted to go into with no-one but Dolenz knowing his whereabouts. Ray deserved to know. Fraser needed him to know.

Fraser looked from Dolenz to the other person in the room. It didn't feel right, to think he'd be working with her. But orders were orders, and it was for the good of his country.

"So." he said, as calmly and politely as if he were addressing the Queen. (Well, not quite as politely as all that, as he was seated and not using very specific honorific terms, but nevertheless, politely.) "I assume Zhang Xiaoxu is not your real name. How may I address you?"

-=-=-

_Earlier that evening_ _while sunset still painted the west horizon in flaming color_, _Fraser arrived home to his small apartment from taking Diefenbaker for a post-work run, to find Dolenz waiting for him inside._

_Diefenbaker had bristled, the fur around his neck standing up, teeth showing in a silent snarl._

_"Dief." A hand on the wolf's neck settled him to a wary but less aggressive stance. Both wolf and Mountie remembered Dolenz well from the incident shortly after their arrival in Chicago involving stolen military secrets. Fraser respected Dolenz's devotion to duty but could not like the cold man._

_Fraser prided himself on maintaining a neat, regulation appearance. But Dolenz seemed to take it one step further. Not only was his suit plain to the point of vanishing into the crowd, and his hair a regulation length and dishwater brown, but there was a sense of blandness about Dolenz, a bureaucratic nothingness that made him seem slippery and somehow untrustworthy, as if he would flicker out of view if one were not looking directly at him._

_"Corporal Dolenz. I see you've let yourself in." Fraser said. "Was there something I could do to help you?"_

_"Constable. I have orders here for you." Dolenz replied._

_Fraser stepped into his apartment and closed the door before crossing the small room to take the papers Dolenz was holding out for him. He was reading over the papers when there was a knock at the door. Fraser opened the door to find two men in casual clothes with an animal cage._

_Before Fraser could say anything, Dolenz said, "Come in, gentlemen. The animal is here."_

_Fraser was almost certain the hairs on his neck stood up as high as those on Diefenbaker's._

_"As you will be undercover, Constable, and your cover story to explain your absence involves a trip home to the North West Territories, we've arranged for your dog to be kenneled at the Inuvik detachment for the duration of your assignment."_

_Fraser wheeled around, his hand still on the door. "Now, just wait a minute." he said. That was too much. It was one thing to be handed orders that had him reporting to Dolenz temporarily and performing some kind of undercover operation - not that he thought that was a good idea, but orders were orders - it was another entirely to take charge of what happened to Diefenbaker, to exile him for the duration._

_"No, you just wait, Constable. Your country needs you to do this. I thought you understood the implications of that nasty business you got caught up in. I don't want to make this about rank, but I thought you'd do what was best for Canada."_

_There was something ugly in the way Dolenz said it, the way it was really obvious that he was using that appeal because it would work with Fraser, not because of any intrinsic patriotism. Still, it was a well-chosen argument, and Fraser knew he was on the hook._

_Fraser stepped aside and let the men into the apartment, dropping to a crouch beside Diefenbaker._

_"Diefenbaker." He put his hands into Diefenbaker's ruff, running his fingers through the soft fur and looking the intelligent creature in the eyes. "You have to go with these men. I'm sorry. I'll send for you as soon as I can."_

_Diefenbaker whined, obviously aware of the parting to come. But he got into the cage with minimal fuss. Fraser watched the men carry him out of the apartment with a sinking feeling that trouble was coming. The letter ordering him to report to Dolenz didn't have much detail and he had a hundred questions, but Dolenz was already bustling him officiously out of the room._

_"You need to call the CPD Detective you liaise with and let him know you're going to be out of town. Cover is that you're visiting with a sick friend back home. No need for details." He handed Fraser his phone as they walked down the stairs. The expression on Dolenz's face suggested that any attempt to countermand his orders would meet with the same pressure on Fraser to do his duty that Dolenz had already brought to bear. Fraser thought that it was a mistake to try to cut Ray out without a real explanation, but he saved his breath to argue that later. As Fraser left a message for Ray on his voicemail, implying that he had flown out much earlier in the day and was already home in Tuktoyaktuk, Dolenz chivvied him out of his apartment building and into a waiting car._

_After Fraser disconnected the phone call and handed the phone back to Dolenz, Dolenz gave the driver of the car brief directions._

_"Sorry to whisk you away like this." Dolenz said to Fraser, though there was something in his tone and countenance that made it clear that this was a pro-forma apology. "Things got moving fast, and we have an opportunity here we just can't miss. I'll brief you fully at the hotel room."_

_The car wound through Chicago's darkening streets, and Fraser kept a sharp eye on where they were going. The traffic was dense, and true to his word, Dolenz was not providing any information until they reached the hotel, which left Fraser with time to think. By the time they reached the hotel Fraser had formulated the plea to make the second call to Ray, determined to achieve contact and pass on a real message. Every instinct screamed at him not to leave it to the simple voicemail.  
_

-=-=-

The briefing with Dolenz and the woman who had, in the one night Fraser had known her, caused murder and mayhem, only served to unsettle Fraser further. What he was being asked to do was unnerving. The manner in which his cover had been set up was, frankly, outright distressing. Not that Fraser would ever let Dolenz see that.

When full darkness provided cover for Fraser to slip away to meet with Ray, sneaking out of the hotel room proved entirely too easy. Fraser had a room to himself. Apparently Dolenz hadn't considered that he'd need any precaution to keep Fraser in it. The hotel was cheap enough and old enough to have windows that would open given the right impetus, although it took an effort for Fraser to open the window slowly, so that the creaking of the ancient frame didn't wake his companions. Then it was a matter of leaning out, reaching across his arm span, grabbing the bottom of a fire-escape step, and playing monkey bars.

The two mile walk to the park was a pleasant escape from the overheated hotel room, but also an unpleasant reminder of Diefenbaker's absence. The wolf would have enjoyed romping through the light frosting of snow on the ground. Fraser arrived at the pond before Ray. He had no way of knowing when Ray would be there. Without a car's headlights, the pond and the area around it was lit only by the faint light of a street lamp some feet away on a path. Fraser stood by the water and waited. A warm front had melted some of the ice, making it weak and rotten, and in the dim light the pond didn't so much shimmer as lurk, waiting for an incautious person to step on a thin patch and fall in. There was a dank smell of stagnant water, plant life that had died while the pond was frozen over.

Fraser waited by the pond for three quarters of an hour. It was chilly, and he missed the warmth of his own sweater. Dolenz had apparently taken the liberty of going through his clothes and packing up the newest of his jeans, but otherwise his wardrobe was to be supplied, and apparently his role undercover required a selection of finely machine knit cashmere and lambswool sweaters in place of his thick hand-knits. At least he'd been allowed to keep his leather jacket.

Fraser was just beginning to wonder if Ray hadn't understood his message when he heard the familiar engine sound of the beater Ray was stuck with since the destruction of his beloved Riviera. Ray parked on the paved slope leading down to the pond and cut the lights, careful not to draw attention to the clandestine meeting.

"This better be good." Ray said as he walked toward Fraser. He knew it was unfair to still feel angry as if Fraser really _had_ taken off for the Northwest Territories without letting him know, but his emotions had been in turmoil a while and were not easy to reign in now.

"Thank you for coming, Ray." Fraser said. "I'm not supposed to meet with anyone." He laughed dryly. "I'm disobeying a direct order, which I suppose you will find difficult to believe. But I couldn't let you think that I'd just leave- and- well, it's selfish, but I want someone to know where I went. In case...."

Ray took hold of Fraser's arm, looking at his face in the dim streetlight.

"What's going on, Benny? In case what?" he said sharply.

"Ray, do you remember the woman known as Zhang Xiaoxu?"

Ray's sharp intake of breath was enough to indicate that he certainly did.

"What, has she escaped, or something?"

"Not exactly, Ray."

Ray could hear the uneasiness in Fraser's voice and it triggered a deep protective instinct in him, remembering the damage the twisted woman had done before.

"So, what?" Ray prompted.

"I was approached by Corporal Dolenz with a, uh, well, with orders to co-operate in an undercover operation. It would seem that rather than face jail time, the woman we knew as Zhang was offered the opportunity to work for both Canadian and United States intelligence organizations, infiltrating a criminal organization. It was made to look as though she had escaped custody the night of the incidents in which we were involved, and she is allegedly a fugitive from both North American law enforcement agencies and the Chinese Government."

Ray looked taken aback. "They set the bitch - sorry- they set her loose?" he exclaimed. "But she - damn it, she committed cold blooded murder, and she would have killed you too."

"Corporal Dolenz said that she was still facing justice, that I should think of it as an extended term of community service." Fraser said, an edge of wryness tinting his otherwise deadpan voice as he repeated the comment that had been intended to mollify him.

"I don't understand, how do you come into this?" Ray asked.

"The criminal organization that Zhang infiltrated is in need of a person with particular skills." Fraser said, his voice still flat and emotionless. "Zhang persuaded them that I have those skills. Apparently it was a simple matter to make it appear that I was, in fact, complicit in the theft of military secrets that she was a part of, and furthermore, implicated in-" Fraser took a half-second breath, a barely noticeable pause to steady his voice "- the crimes committed by Victoria Metcalfe and the embezzlement associated with my father's death."

"God dammit Benny, that's not right!" Ray exclaimed, tightening his grip on Fraser's arm. "Dolenz went along with this?"

"I believe Corporal Dolenz has done everything possible to strengthen the cover story that Zhang has been establishing with the criminal organization." Fraser ran his fingers along his eyebrow shakily, the nervous gesture seeming more like an instinctive seeking of comfort than ever before. "I am to infiltrate this organization with Zhang. The story that she has told is that we fell out over the theft of the MiniDisc, but that she has now seduced me back to her side."

Ray thought Fraser had never sounded colder or more remote as he finished his explanation.

"Ray, I am to pose as her - as her-"

Fraser was saved from having to pronounce the word "lover" by the sound of another car. Ray immediately stepped in front of his partner, drawing his gun. The bright headlights dazzled him. The figure approaching could only be seen in silhouette, but even when Ray realized who it was, he kept his gun up, aimed steadily ahead.

"Corporal Dolenz, what a pleasure." Ray said sardonically.

"Detective Vecchio. Put the gun down." Dolenz said.

"I don't think I will, not until I know what's going on." Ray's voice was dark and full of warning. Fraser moved to step between them, and Ray put his arm up, holding Fraser back.

"Let me handle this for a minute, Benny." he said.

Fraser acquiesced, stepping back. A lot of trust had been damaged between Ray and him over the last few months. Since Victoria. He trusted Ray. He knew Ray wouldn't harm Dolenz without evidence of an immediate threat to their lives. Dolenz, on the other hand, he had no reason to trust. It went against the grain to stand up to a superior officer, but this whole situation was awry.

"You want to tell me what the hell is going on, Dolenz?" Ray said. "This Zhang woman or whoever she really is, she just about killed Fraser. She cut her accomplice's throat. She's dangerous. What are you thinking? And undercover work? Do you have any idea how bad Fraser is at that?"

Fraser blushed crimson, the car headlights illuminating his red face. It was true, though. He'd put the objection to Dolenz in terms of playing to one's strengths, but as a matter of fact, he was simply a poor liar, and the extended play-acting entailed by undercover work sat very badly with him. Ray, no doubt, was remembering his altogether abysmal impersonation of a car salesman.

"What appears to be going on, Detective, is that Constable Fraser is insubordinate. But I had a feeling he'd be meeting you somewhere. Constable Fraser, I'm not stupid. That phone call -well, let's say I might not have heard you leave the hotel but I had plenty of clues for where to look when I found you were gone. What do you have to say for yourself?" The disapproval in his tone was clear.

"Sir, I can make no excuse -" Fraser began.

"Hush, Benny." Ray said sharply. "Dolenz, he came to me because he can trust me, and he's finally got the sense to put that over your insignificant rank. Let me tell you something right now, Benny's not going in anywhere undercover without me. I don't care what you think about that, I'll find a way to blow the whole operation if you try to make him. Like hell you have the jurisdiction for this little game."

With his back to the car headlights, Dolenz's face was shadowed. But the ugly smile on it was unmistakeable, the shadows only serving to exaggerate it.

"If you think you know more about jurisdictional issues than I do, you're sorely mistaken, Detective. The big boys have it all sorted out. Put your weapon away, and I'll tell you what's going to happen." His tone was utterly condescending.

Ray hesitated a moment, then holstered his gun.

"Talk." he said.

"Not that you need to know, but in all likelihood, this operation will center around a Canadian target. As for your involvement, as I said, I did predict that Constable Fraser would turn to you. In fact, I argued for your inclusion in this operation from the start. You can thank politics for my failure to win that point.

"However," and here he looked ineffably smug in the half-light, "I prepared for the eventuality that Constable Fraser would compromise operational security, and I insisted that we have a cover set up in case of these circumstances, and paperwork seconding you to a different branch of your Government."

There was a smirk in Dolenz's tone of voice. "If that doesn't suit, you'll have to go in to protective custody to ensure that Constable Fraser's cover is safe. I'm sure your superior officer, your Lieutenant Welsh, will understand."

"You set us up. You set Benny- Fraser up." Ray accused, his tone furious.

"Not really. If Constable Fraser had obeyed orders and not contacted you, he would have gone undercover alone with our other operative alone as planned. But I do think you will be useful. You will report directly to me, although this operation falls under the auspices of your Federal Bureau of Investigation, if that makes you feel better." It didn't sound like it made _him_ feel better. "Think of it as a joint task force. You already seem to have experience with cross-agency interaction."

Ray paused to wonder exactly what the Canadians had to trade off that the Feds were letting them run this show on US soil. Given the Secret Squirrel posturing from Dolenz, he wondered if he'd ever know. Perhaps Dolenz had worn someone down with his buzzword bingo. Maybe the Canadians would be more competent than the Feds who ended up in Chicago. Maybe not. Either way it was better to be set up and be with Benny than find out later that something had happened to him while Ray was still under the angry impression that he'd run back home instead of face the tension between them.

Dolenz's tone shifted abruptly from the smugly expository to the coldly authoritative as he interrupted Ray's woolgathering, "And now, you'll follow me back to the hotel, where Constable Fraser should have stayed, for a full briefing. Constable, you're with me."

**Author's Notes: Well, here we go, off on the joyride! For those who love the wolf, trust me, he's not that easy to keep out of things. I'm so delighted that people are excited about this story, and I hope it will continue to entertain! **


	3. Chapter 2: In Which No one Hits Dolenz

**Disclaimer - I totally forgot to disclaim the previous two chapters I posted. I know that now everyone assumes I own the intellectual property around which this story is built. I will lease the Detective out on every second Tuesday, but the Mountie is all mine.  
**

**Chapter 2 - In Which No-one Hits Dolenz**

"Detective Vecchio, we seem to make a habit of meeting in cheap hotel rooms."

Ray's face turned into an animal snarl at the smooth, taunting tone of the woman who'd once kidnapped him and hurt his partner. This provoked nothing more than a teasing laugh from her.

"I take it you're not happy to see me." she said, as Ray, Dolenz and Fraser entered the room Fraser had escaped from earlier that night to find her sitting on the bed looking composed and cosmopolitan.

Ray took in her appearance. Her hair had been cut short and was a smooth, abbreviated bob. She wore tight leather jeans, the sides of the legs laced up with crossed lacings, corset style. Her loose white silk shirt was a contrast. Ray thought she looked absurdly piratical, but also younger than she had the only other night they'd met her.

"No, I'm not happy to see you, -" Ray managed to bite his tongue to avoid speaking the expletive he had in mind. Fraser might not like the woman but he would be unnecessarily upset by Ray using harsh language toward her.

She caught the missing word and a teasing smile crossed her face. "It would be simplest to call me Xu. It's not my name, but it's what I'm going by." Xu shrugged a shoulder eloquently. "The underworld is largely not populated by people with a grasp of asian languages and naming practices. And I don't answer to 'bitch'."

Ray rolled his eyes. Xu wanted to play games, he could play games. And - he didn't _like_ undercover work, but no matter how things had gone down between them recently, if it would keep Benny safe, he'd do what he had to. Presumably, based on the 'visiting a sick friend up North' story, it wasn't anything long term.

"Dolenz, now we're not freezing our asses off, you mind giving me the 411 here?" Ray said.

"Sit." Dolenz said.

Ray took his coat off but remained standing. Fraser emulated him, looking uncomfortable at the tension in the room.

"I'll stand. You talk." Ray said.

"Fine." Dolenz snapped. Ray hid a smile, he'd finally managed to put the cold man off balance, if not by much.

"Xu has been able to work her way into the good graces of the Scardina crime family. This is not easy. They don't generally trust people not born in or to parents who emigrated from a particular small town in Sicily."

"However," Xu interrupted, "my track record, and the fact that I am supposedly dependent on them to protect me from the police of this country makes them see me as both valuable and easily controlled."

"Xu has found out that the Don of the Scardina family, Marco Scardina, is planning some sort of assassination. It's bigger than an ordinary mob hit. Now, we don't know who the target is, though from Xu's intelligence we have reason to think it's a political job and we do know that it will occur in Canada, targeting a resident, not a visitor. For logistical reasons, the Don apparently wants to find a hitman outside his organization. This is unprecedented. It would seem that to reach the target the Scardinas need someone who can pass through a lot of security. That would be Constable Fraser."

Xu nodded and once again took over the conversation. "I have been working with one of Marco's sons, Giovanni, also known as Joey, in Pittsburgh. He's eager to gain favor with his father. There's much reason to think that his brother is favored to take over the family business after the Don's death. When Joey mentioned that his father was looking for someone who could get close to a senior political or judicial figure in Canada without attracting notice, someone with very good shooting skills, I thought at once of the delightful Constable. And for all that _we_ know that he's a fine young man, Constable Fraser has enough question marks in his background for it to be easy for me to get Joey to consider him for the job."

Ray's shoulders were getting tenser and tenser as he listened to the explanation. Fraser as a mob hitman? Were these people insane?

Dolenz spoke, "In addition to giving us the chance to discover who the target is and prevent the assassination, this is a chance that we can't miss to take down the entire Scardina organization. If we play our cards right, we can get Marco Scardina for soliciting a murder. But it's up to you gentlemen to make this work. The details of your cover shouldn't be hard to remember. You're both dirty cops."

Fraser was just quick enough to grab Ray by the shoulders before he could slam a quick right cross into Dolenz's nose.

"Ray, please." he said.

Ray could have sworn he heard laughter in Dolenz's next straightforward statement. "Your cover, of course. Constable Fraser has been corruptible at least since the incidents surrounding the death of his father. You, Detective Vecchio, come from a neighborhood and background that lent itself to colorful inferences."

This time, Fraser had to hold himself back from a quick right cross to Dolenz's smug face. Ray had worked so hard to break free from the mafia influence in his neighborhood. Ray had fought back against Frankie Zuko, the bullying mob boss who'd plagued him since childhood. Ray had watched Frankie's sister, his childhood love, dying, shot in cross-fire meant for him. And Dolenz made it all dirty. Fraser tamped down his frustration under an even more steely resolve to give away nothing more of his emotions to Dolenz and Xu's eager watch.

Ray's glance flicked from Fraser across Dolenz to Xu. Fraser's face had taken on the stillness of a mirrored lake. Dolenz appeared oblivious to his anger, but Ray could see Xu's amusement brimming over.

"Whatever." Ray said. Time to defuse the situation. He wasn't going to let Dolenz keep messing with their heads. If they were going under they needed details, information, now. "Just tell us what we need to know. So we're supposed to be with Xu. How long for? Why was I supposed to think Fraser went home?"

Dolenz looked to Xu, almost as if getting permission to explain everything before he answered.

"You'll be traveling with Xu. The Scardina family is meeting at a location in rural Indiana to discuss family business. Xu is going to be a part of Giovanni's entourage. We believe Marco Scardina will be present. Giovanni will be trying to impress him. His older brother, Paolo, will presumably also be present.

"The rest is smoke and mirrors." Xu said. "We think that your friends and colleagues here will believe that Constable Fraser went North and you followed him. Your commanding officer will be briefed separately, of course. And the Scardinas will accept that you told people that you were going North in order to get away from Chicago to attend this meeting, shall we say, unobtrusively. It would be pointless for them to buy a couple of officers of the law if you were too obviously owned by them."

Ray followed the plan. It didn't mean he had to like it. The double cover was too complicated. Anything could go wrong. Knowing Benny's luck, one of his old friends from the Territories could show up in Chicago and let everyone know he hadn't been home. Still. Thank God Benny had called him. Even if Dolenz had been counting on it, counting on roping in extra support from Ray without having to go through official channels. Ray hated being manipulated, but he hated the thought of Benny undercover with the mob, on his own, almost infinitely more.

Dolenz briefed them on some of the logistical details of the operation, still looking uncomfortable that they were all standing, Ray refusing to bow to his power plays. Then Dolenz excused Xu and himself and left Ray and Fraser to share the hotel room, with dire warnings about not trying to sneak out or contact anyone else, at all, or else.

"You're already in quite enough trouble, Constable." he scolded.

As soon as Dolenz closed the door behind him, both Ray and Fraser crossed to the twin beds and collapsed down onto them, sitting facing each other. Fraser's face slumped into something almost recognizably tired and unhappy.

"Ray." he said softly. "I'm sorry I called you. I shouldn't have involved you. I'm sure the Lieutenant can negotiate a solution that doesn't entail protective custody should you choose to leave."

He looked down at the plasticy, floral bedspread, noticing a ragged edged cigarette burn in the fabric. His nose twitched, detecting the unpleasant smell of years of stale smoke overriden by room freshener. He felt as flat and dirty as the bed covering. Of course he understood why he'd been a pariah in the bullpen since Gardino's death. Of course he understood why his actions had hurt Ray. That didn't mean it didn't hurt to see people he thought of as friends judging him, shunning him for doing what he thought was right. But his hurt didn't matter. What mattered was that he wouldn't be responsible for hurting Ray one more time, dragging him into something unpleasant and undoubtedly dangerous.

"Fuck, Benny." Ray said sharply. "Just- you know things haven't been right. You know it's hard. It's so hard." he swallowed. "You -" he couldn't spill out all the things he'd thought, the betrayal he'd felt at Fraser's blind pursuit of justice when Ray's heart demanded revenge against Zuko. "We've made a pretty big mess of things. But if you think for one minute I could _let_ you walk into the jaws of the shark with no backup except that psycho bitch... Benny, you're family."

Fraser looked up almost shyly into the rage in Ray's eyes. It was an anger that burned out of the sort of love and loyalty that Fraser had never really known. He nodded his head, a small gesture, but one that Ray could read perfectly well.

Ray broke the heavy mood, picking up the plastic-bound room service menu and declaring, "I'm starving. Did you eat?"

"No, Ray, we didn't have time."

"So let's see what we've got here. Hmm. Sixteen dollar hamburger. That sounds good."

"Ray! That's exorbitant." Fraser said. "Surely there is a more economic option. The RCMP's budget-"

"Can cough up for some decent food. Dolenz will have to expense all this, right?"

"Yes."

"And Dolenz isn't your most favorite person right now, right?"

"Corporal Dolenz is-" Fraser's lips twisted in an odd frown as he tried to find a respectful way to state his reservations about his superior. "Well. It would be a petty form of revenge."

"The best kind. No big deal. So, two sixteen dollar cheeseburgers. And fries." Ray grinned.

Pleased to see his friend smiling, Fraser relaxed his tense shoulders. "I do believe we should also order a side vegetable. Onion rings?" Fraser took the menu from Ray's hands. If they were going to engage in petty spite, they might as well go all the way. "And we'll need our strength for this operation. The apple crisp sounds good."

"The ten dollar apple crisp? Good call, Benny."

Ray picked up the phone. "Hello, room service?"

Fraser lay back on the bed and listened to his friend order petty revenge served piping hot. Things had seemed hopeless when Dolenz picked him up. But now he had Ray's street smarts and understated strength to back him up.

---

In the basement of Paolo Scardina's Lake Shore Drive home, Detective Ray Kowalski took apart his HK MP5 submachine gun, a personal gift from Paolo, and carefully cleaned all of the parts. It was a meditation exercise of sorts. He felt twitchy. Twitchier than usual. Sure, his cover presented very few problems. Play dumb. Play violent. With the kind of dumb, violent assholes Paolo surrounded himself with, that wasn't a hardship. Pick a few fights, puff up his chest and play big dog. Ray could do that. Answer to some other guy's name, turn around automatically when Paolo yelled for "Mikey", sure, he could do that too. But this assignment was getting way out of hand.

Paolo was big news in Chicago, smart, ruthless, and moving up in the Scardina outfit with a vengeance. Ray was supposed to be getting in close, as one of Paolo's hired men, one of his leg breakers, close enough to find out who was bringing the drugs in from Colombia for Paolo, where the German machine guns with armor piercing ammo were coming from. The basic stuff. Ray jumped at the opportunity to take this assignment. A quick clean up beat going home every night to Stella bitching and moaning about how he wasn't the man she married.

But now, now Paolo was hauling ass to some big family meeting in the middle of Indiana, and Ray's Captain had cleared the way for him to tag along. Ray wondered if the word jurisdiction mean nothing to the people running him. He absolutely hated the kind of deep cover where they sent him in with no reliable way to get a bail out before the circus rode back into Chicago. Ray had a feeling that he'd end up working for the Feds if he wasn't careful. Ray swore under his breath, vocalizing the chorus of profanity that had been rattling in his skull.

The basement was quiet, empty of people. Upstairs they were all at it, the macho posturing, the women - draping themselves all over the men. At least he'd discouraged that. 'Mikey' had a bad temper. Because whether she still wanted him or not, Stella would have Ray's balls on a silver platter if he let one of the mafia chicks engage in any naughty touching.

Ray finished his routine and started reassembling the beautiful, ugly, deadly weapon, hands quick and sure even though his glasses were sliding down his nose. Not that there was a lot of light in the basement. But there was something anchoring in the total package of the smell, the feel and sight of that cold metal in his hands.

Paolo said Joey was bringing a bent cop to the meet. Well, a Mountie. Ray pictured Dudley Doright and felt a dryly amused drift of cognitive dissonance at the thought of a starchy oversized boyscout turning mob errand-boy.

Marco Scardina wanted someone killed, and he planned to use someone outside the family. That was new. But Joey Scardina being the one to find a likely candidate? Ray felt like his grip on the players in this game was slipping. Joey didn't share Paolo's keen intellect. Joey wasn't known for taking initiative. That's why Marco Scardina had him stuck in Pittsburgh.

Paolo Scardina was comfortable enough with Ray around now that he'd talked freely in front of him. Ray had worked hard to get to that point, worked hard to be Paolo's right hand man, and the pay off was that he got just enough information to keep him on edge and wishing he could pull out of this assignment before something went horribly wrong. Paolo seemed amused at the moves his little brother was making. Paolo said Joey picked up some 'oriental babe' who was running the show. She was the one who had this Mountie on a leash.

Ray felt a cold, fierce anger in his gut as he slid the sights back into place on the weapon. Dirty cops. Yeah, Ray thought, it'd almost be worth it to be hell and gone from his jurisidiction, from the safety of his hometown if it meant he was going to nail someone who should be better than that for selling out to the mob. It was almost worth the way his moronic, violent cover as Mikey was beginning to seep into him, like a filthy grease stain that would take forever to scrub out, the longer he was under. Mikey and Ray were apparently in accord about what bent cops deserved. Ray grinned fiercely as he stood and tidied his workspace. For the chance to take down a crooked Mountie, Ray Kowalski could _almost_ look forward to this crazy roadtrip.

**Author's Note: Heh. Surprise guest star. Thank you all for reading and reviewing. It makes me really happy to know people are getting some pleasure out of this story! Lots more twists and turns in the epic yet to come. Stay tuned for more mob hijinks and inter-agency co-operation. ;)  
**


	4. Chapter 3: Liars

**Disclaimer: Mostly not mine.**

**Chapter 3 - Liars  
**

The next day, Dolenz went with Ray to his family home to pick up some clothes and let Mrs. Vecchio know that Ray would be away. Of course, Ray couldn't tell her the exact nature of his absence. On the way over, Ray driving his loaner car with Dolenz in the passenger seat, Dolenz noticed that the mecurially tempered detective appeared anxious.

"You know," Dolenz ventured, "when I envisaged this scenario, I anticipated that you would be concerned about your Lieutentant's reaction. I failed to factor in a harmless middle-aged woman."

Ray looked over at Dolenz in astonishment. That was a joke, right? The starchy, anal Mountie made a joke. Not a great one, but still.

"Well, see," Ray said, sparing Dolenz the corner of a grin, "Welsh is just a seasoned police officer with years of experience on the street and in interrogation rooms. Ma is my mother. I can't lie to her or she'll drag me around the room by her ear."

"But you can't tell her the truth." Dolenz stated, now looking anxious himself.

Ray's half smile was rueful, thinking of nights of sneaking out to see the beautiful Irene, the things he'd told his mother about where he was going. "I can't lie to her, but that doesn't mean I have to tell her the truth, the whole truth, and nothing but the truth. Geez, only for Benny would I do this."

They arrived at the solidly built Vecchio residence. Dolenz had no choice but to wait in the car so he didn't cause too much speculation.

Ray emerged fifteen minutes later with a suitcase and a frustrated expression. Having to tell his mother he was going away, possibly for a couple of weeks, probably not much longer, no he couldn't tell her where, had been an exercise in opening himself up for target practice. He put the suitcase in the trunk then slid into the driver's seat.

"Any trouble?" Dolenz asked.

Ray started the car and accelerated grimly. Dolenz grabbed the dash board. Acceleration shouldn't have adverbs attached to it, especially not adverbs that boded ill for their long term survival in Chicago traffic.

"Nah, not really. I told her I needed to go help Benny with something and I didn't know when I'd be back or where he was headed exactly. I said he'd called me and said he was headed back home."

Dolenz nodded, apparently admiring his subterfuge.

"So, I got treated to a nice earful about letting her adopted Canadian son go off on his own when he's so trouble prone, and then about being irresponsible enough to run off on another vacation right now, because nothing says love like a mixed message, Ma." Ray omitted to mention the sidebar discussion Mrs. Vecchio had with herself over people saying that Ray was feuding with Frankie Zuko but surely no son of hers would be such a moron as to get into a fight with a mafia don, but anyway, maybe it was good he was going out of town right now, after all.

Fraser stayed in the room that he'd shared with Ray while the two men were running their errand. He'd have to spend time with Xu soon, they'd be traveling, then staying where-ever this meeting was to take place, somewhere in rural Indiana apparently. But even if it was the coward's way, he wasn't ready to confront her. She was very skilled at putting him off balance, and accepting her as an ally was sorely testing his faith in human nature.

When Ray and Dolenz returned, Dolenz swept into the room.

"Ready to move, Constable?" he said. "We'll take my car over to the Ritz-Carlton downtown. Xu will contact Giovanni's driver to pick you up there."

Ray snorted slightly at the implication that they'd pretend they'd stayed somewhere high classed instead of saving Canadian pennies in a flea trap.

"Budgets, Detective." Dolenz said. "We all have them. And most of mine has been spent on outfitting Constable Fraser in something other than flannel."

Ray had the unlikely sensation of vaguely warming toward Dolenz, but he thought that it would pass just as soon as he stopped to think about the sort of danger Dolenz was willing to subject Fraser to.

Fraser pulled his jacket on. Its weather-beaten patina contrasted with today's outfit, a pair of charcoal grey pants wool pants topped with a deep red cashmere sweater. It was far from his usual taste, but at least Dolenz had picked clothing with a masculine simplicity. Fraser felt a twinge of disloyalty as he compared the stylish clothes Dolenz had chosen for him with the loud outfit that Ray had foisted upon him when they'd been undercover selling cars.

Xu evidently approved. When they left the room to meet her at the elevator, she let out a low whistle. "Ah, now you could be on the cover of GQ." she said. Ray rolled his eyes. Fraser? A fashion plate? The man wore white gym socks pulled up over his sweats when he lounged around the house.

The car that arrived to pick up the three going undercover from the Ritz Carlton was possibly the most discreet stretch limousine that Ray had ever seen. It was understated and yet still large enough to fit a small formal function in.

"Ray, please sit up front with the driver. I'd like some time alone with Ben." Xu purred.

Ray bristled, but there wasn't anything he could say or do about it. Fraser was supposed to be posing as Xu's lover, that meant that they would have to be close. He was merely an adjunct, in it for a shot at some of the Scardina money according to his cover. He took the front seat, and twisted his head around to look through the partition as Fraser held the door open for Xu to get into the car.

Xu slid across to the middle of the seat. Fraser got in and fastened his seatbelt, then Xu slid back across, nestling close against his side. The softness of the lynx fur coat she was wearing made her seem like a giant kitten curled up next to him.

Ray wrinkled his nose and turned back around to face the road. Fraser was, in spite of appearances, no blushing virgin. He'd have to deal with this one on his own. At least the partition meant that Ray didn't have to listen to them.

Fraser cleared his throat. "The seatbelt is on the other side. You should move over." he said, trying not to sound too hopeful.

Xu smiled. "Ah, I'm quite comfortable here." she said. "You'll just have to hold me if we stop quickly."

Fraser opened his mouth to speak and found a finger pressed against his lips.

"Ah!" Xu said, "And no trying to snow me with a dozen paragraphs of accident safety statistics. I know what I'm doing."

Fraser had the uneasy sensation that she knew exactly what she was doing, while he was lost at sea. Still, it couldn't be any more daunting than facing down a rutting caribou.

"We're going to have to work closely, Constable. We're going to have to convince some very suspicious men that you are both greedy enough and besotted enough to do what I want, to do the job for them. What is it going to take for you not to look horrified any time I get close to you?"

"I don't-"

"Well, I'll grant you don't make faces, but your body language speaks loudly enough to me that even an idiot like Joey Scardina will pick up on it, never mind the rest of his famly."

"I'm sorry, it's just not very easy to trust you under the circumstances." Fraser said.

Xu laughed, a soft seductive sound.

"You really are adorable. Why not say it? You have every reason to think I'm evil. You'd never admit to yourself that you're afraid of me, but I did what I could to make you fear me. Now I have to try to find a way to make you see that I am not _only_ that person who you met."

"It is difficult to see you as other than a calculating criminal." Fraser said, his tone neutral.

"I am not going to pretend to be other than what my nature is." Xu said philosophically. "I'll even confess I enjoy having you off-balance. I didn't need to pretend we were lovers, business associates would have sufficed, but I don't get a lot of pleasure in life, and I knew that I'd have more fun this way."

She shrugged, her small body in the large fur wriggling against Fraser.

"But I am not only that part of my nature. Would it be easier for you if you understood me more? Why I am like I am?"

"Perhaps." Fraser conceded cautiously.

"We have a long drive ahead." Xu said. "Let me entertain you. I'm good at that."

"All right." Fraser said. It was a good idea to know what he was dealing with, who he was dealing with.

"I was a fortunate child." Xu started. Her voice was low and thoughtful. "I was pretty, and I had the unexpected chance of falling in to the cinematic industry in China. At first, it was an exciting time. Even as a child, I didn't miss what was going on. You see, in the late nineteen fifties, there was a brief period when artists were encouraged to work independently and people believed that things were changing, that the Government would control things less. Artists, you know, are never quite at home following rules. We were never quite the well-indoctrinated automatons that we should have been.

"But that glimpse at freedom changed quickly, and brutally. I learned very young that it was better to be safe, be careful, and say exactly what the party line told me to say."

Xu paused, and turned from Fraser to look out the window of the big car. They were leaving Chicago's suburbs behind, and as they headed east, the landscape became more open.

Fraser observed her, wondering how much of her silence was gearing up to share of herself, intimate stories of her past, and how much was calculating the best way to be persuasive, to seduce him into trusting her.

"When I was a young woman, the films that were being made... the films that it was safe to be in... they were all about the socialist hero, and there was the beautiful heroine, and I was pretty enough for that. And lucky enough to, oh, fall in with the right crowd, the ones who were playing it safe. It was terrifying, though. All of these films were being banned, and the people who made them losing everything, losing their lives, often, judged and condemned, imprisoned or executed. Their families starved. I lived well, you understand, I had always lived well, compared to other people. I was a civil servant of a kind. I never went hungry, I had my own apartment, just for me. I thought I would do anything rather than lose that. You can't understand-"

"I can understand poverty, and fear, and wanting a way out." Fraser said, sounding almost startled to hear himself interrupt.

"Ah, yes." Xu said. "I suppose you would have seen, well. Sometimes it seems like there are not many choices."

"There are always choices." Fraser said firmly.

"There are choices, but not always good ones." Xu replied. "At any rate, I wasn't going to stay young forever, and my director's wife was not pretty nor accommodating, and that was one decision that was not difficult." She wriggled again, disconcertingly, as if underlining the physicality of her past.

"It was a smart choice." she said. "Because then there were two years when no one was making films out of fear of the Government's response. I had little luxuries I might not have had, thanks to my lover. I have always fallen on my feet. My lover was in favor with Madame Mao, and she brought the industry back to life. I was too old to play the heroine, but there were still roles for me, my lover made sure of that. Things were good again for a while."

Fraser found himself intrigued. He knew what must be coming next, or a part of it.

"What happened," he asked, "After -"

"After the death of the Great Leader? After Madame Mao's arrest? Would you like to guess?"

Her voice was bitter, an old, tired hatred in it.

"Were you arrested?" Fraser asked quietly.

"Yes. A lot of us were. I was seen as a crony, perhaps a conspirator, because she had liked me."

Xu shifted, pulling away slightly. They were now well into Indiana, and the bleak, empty fields stubbled with corn cut short for harvest seemed to reflect the sudden coldness in the back of the car. Fraser and Xu watched the land unfold, letting the uneasy silence lie between them as red barns and giant water towers broke the monotony. Finally Xu spoke again.

"I was sentenced to ten years in a labor camp. The punishment was light, to show that there could be mercy. Light punishment. My hands were bleeding from the rough haft of the hoe the first day I arrived. I went into the camp a spoiled pussycat. I hadn't known anything but a soft life. People resented that. It was- I found myself with another familiar choice."

Xu shrugged, her voice turning wry.

"I took one of the guards as a lover, or he took me. He protected me from petty revenges. People spitting in my food or stealing my work equipment to get me in trouble. And he enjoyed... he enjoyed having a fallen film star at his beck and call, taunting me with what would happen when a younger, prettier prisoner arrived. It was six months before a member of the Red Army came to see me to offer me something better than another nine and a half years in the camp. It was no choice at all."

"I'm sorry." Fraser said. Whatever she was, whatever he had seen her do, she hadn't deserved the horror of the labor camp.

Xu looked away again. Her eyes hardened as she steeled herself against his sympathy. She was supposed to be making him like and trust her, awakening his innate sense of protectiveness, not developing her own inclination to admire his open kindness, the empathetic nature that extended even to snakes, even though it was not in his best interest to share of his great-heartedness. He wanted to nurture a bird with a broken wing? She could give him that and still keep herself aloof.

"At first all that was wanted of me was simple. I was too well known in China, but I _was_ a good actress, perhaps even great." Her tone was light and melodious again, losing the sense of duress that came when she talked about the bad times.

"I was no ingenue any more, but that didn't matter. I was instructed in many languages and I went abroad and lived ostensibly as a diplomat. I used my charms to trap men into precarious positions. I knew that I was a whore-"

Fraser made a pained sound at the harsh, vulgar word.

"No, there's no point in pretending. I had always used my body to get what I needed. This was no different. And once again I had luxury, such luxury. Nice clothes, fine food, everything I could want. For such a low price. I foolishly thought this was all my country could ask of me."

"It was perhaps five years of this life before I was recalled back to China to be trained in further useful skills. I was trusted now. I was reinstated as a person, my past misdeeds, whatever they were, wiped away. Of course, that was as long as I continued to co-operate and act as an agent abroad."

"And this co-operation?" Fraser prompted.

"You know." Xu said. "I don't need to tell you. Murder. Theft. Betrayal. Whatever I was told to do for my country. And you know for yourself what it made me. Now you know what I was before." She shrugged, pressing in close, the lynx fur tickling Fraser's nose. "Only, now that's all over, and I get a second chance. A chance to win my freedom in America. They will let me be free when I have served my new masters well. It will be a long time, but I want it, I want to be my own person, to make amends for who I've been. I have lived in this country long enough to believe that it is possible to reinvent oneself, to fly to the west and be free." Xu's voice held a pleading note. "You can't begrudge me that, can you? I don't want you to ignore - I know I have done unforgivable things, but doesn't everyone deserve a second chance? Don't I deserve a chance to live, to really live?"

'Victoria.' Fraser thought. He closed his eyes against the passing landscape, the press of one slim, curved body against him so like the other. Didn't everyone deserve a second chance? How could he say no to that?

That didn't mean he had to be stupid about it. Let Xu prove that she truly wanted to redeem herself and he would do everything in his power to help her. But once burnt and he could not, would not cede all of his trust to her words.

**Author's Note: Chapter Four is coming soon. It's a bit briefer. I'm really trying to push my stylistic envelope with this story and I appreciate all the great support and encouragement I'm getting! You know how much it means.**


	5. Chapter 4: Meetings

**Disclaimer - Not even close to mine.**

**Chapter 4 - Meetings**

Something was going on.

Well, duh. Ray Kowalski mentally smacked his forehead for even allowing that thought to float through it. Of _course_ something was going on. If something _wasn't_ going on, he wouldn't be undercover. But - something was going on the details of which he wasn't privy to. Paolo had talked to his brother Joey before they set out for the drive to the big farm house outside North Liberty, and he'd looked all sorts of smug when he got off the phone. Ray was riding with him, not that Paolo needed security this far away from the general mayhem of Chicago, but Paolo a: wouldn't take any risks on that, and b: liked to look important, so Ray was in the back seat with his gun him his lap. Ray had to work hard to keep his leg from jittering. It had been an endless trip sitting there wondering exactly what Joey said that entertained Paolo so much. For once, Paolo seemed happy with his dumbfuck of a brother.

Anyway, he'd be able to stretch his legs soon, get a look around and the lay of the land. They were off the main road now and headed up a long side road that led straight to the farm. Ex-farm. He could see the old buildings in the distance, and it wasn't long before they hit the perimeter security, a serious electric fence and a gate with a passcode. Ray took note of that. Apparently the family felt safe here, that was minor league. It'd still pose issues if he needed to bolt for any reason. He felt the tightening in his gut of instinct, keeping him on his game. The chauffer got out and keyed in the gate code. There was still a full half mile before they reached the farm house. It was in good repair, and impressive for the area. Ray thought it almost looked more like a Southern plantation, transplanted to this bitter, cold climate. The front was decorated with a white pillared portico, and spoke of gracious Georgian elegance that was so different from the run of A-Frame farm houses they'd passed on the way from Chicago. But the windows were heavy safety glass, and Ray noticed cages of bars over them.

There was a limousine parked in front of the building already, the occupants standing by it. Ray got out and walked around to Paolo's side of the car, opening the door and standing between his 'boss' and the strangers. One was standing slightly apart from the others, a balding man with a prominent nose and piercing eyes. The other two, that must be Joey's Asian connection and the crooked Mountie. They were standing close, the woman leaning against the tall, dark haired man, who had an arm casually over her fur-clad shoulder. Ray thought if he hadn't been told the tall man was a crack marksman and tracker, he'd look like a toyboy next to the older woman. He didn't look quite comfortable in the very expensive clothes he was wearing, and he was definitely looking to the woman for approval. That didn't explain what baldy was scowling about. Ray didn't think they presented an immediate threat to Paolo, but it was his job to stand between the mobster he was undercover 'working' for, and anyone who hadn't been checked and cleared six ways to Sunday.

-=-=-

Ray Vecchio watched the new arrivals with a jaundiced eye. So this was the older brother, and one of his gunmen. Not nice. The bodyguard/thug looked edgy and punchy, stretching himself out from the long car ride and taking Fraser, Xu and Ray apart with his eyes. Vecchio catalogued him as a definite concern if things went south. A feeling itched at the back of his mind. Paolo he vaguely recognized from mug shots, but the twitchy, intense bodyguard looked familiar, and he just couldn't put his finger on why. The problem was that between the dark sunglasses the man wore, and his slicked down dark blond hair, he just wasn't quite matching up to a mental record that Ray knew he had from somewhere - some context other than what you'd expect for a guy working for Paolo Scardina.

It was a relief that Paolo had shown up now. Xu insisted they wait outside in the cold for Joey's arrival, that Joey would be offended otherwise. Which was great, because it was cold enough to freeze the balls off a brass monkey, and Ray didn't see why he needed to suffer for her to save face. But even worse, on the long, boring trip, Xu seemed to have worked her charm on Fraser, who was now - well, not totally comfortable, but nevertheless touching the woman, standing close to her as if she were a lover. Ray wondered what she'd said to turn his head. If he hadn't seen Fraser with Victoria he'd trust his partner more now to be using decent judgement. But Fraser seemed to have some kind of weird mis-wired circuit when it came to the really bad girls. And Xu was right up there. Down the bottom of the alphabet and at the top of the 'killing people and screwing over Fraser' hit parade.

This whole operation was moving too fast. It was good that Fraser seemed to have slipped into the cover he'd been given. Dolenz didn't pay attention. Ray knew they should have had much longer to prepare for this operation. But Dolenz was banking on their covers being their own basic selves, twisted a turn to the left. Ray was going to have no problem showing his mean side, under the circumstances.

-=-=-

Fraser took the time that they had to enjoy being out under an open sky. It was a brilliant white, snow coming soon, but not before the sun dropped below the horizon, which would be within an hour now. The smell of the coming snow was in the air, and the rich scent of the dirt in the fields laying fallow around the farm. No more crops would be sown here, but there were enough weeds that he could see deer tracks about the place. Deer he could understand. They made infinitely more sense than the tangle of human motives. Geese flew overhead, their loud communications startling Ray and the man Xu had pointed out as Paolo's bodyguard.

Fraser heard the car before the others. Marco Scardina was already in the house with his bodyguard and driver. This would be Joey. The last player was arriving, and now Fraser would have to summon whatever it took to pretend to base motives. Dolenz seemed to think he'd have no problems. Ray knew him better. But both Ray's life and his depended on him managing to deceive a house full of career criminals. The game was afoot.

-=-=-

Honestly, it wasn't bad getting a vacation at the Inuvik RCMP detachment's dog kennels. There were lots of sled dogs to sniff, huskies, malamutes, a few other mixed breeds with a little wolf. There was plenty of time to sleep and play, and the snow did smell and taste much fresher and cleaner than the Chicago snow.

But there were downsides too. Really, the indignity of being treated like a common working dog. And there was a distinct lack of spoiling. No treats. Oh, and the worrying absence of Diefenbaker's human packmate, the man who could find any trouble brewing within three days' running distance. Diefenbaker sat up next to the bitch who he'd been curled up with and let out a plaintive sounding howl.

His ears perked up as he heard the ruckus of an incoming sled. Well, that made up for things! Old friends to see! New butts to sniff! Ooh! And there might be a tussle for seniority, which, of course, he'd win, but not before some hard scrapping.

The new pack was let into the dog run by their driver. Diefenbaker sniffed the air. Oh, he'd know that human anywhere. It was the one who always smelled intriguing, Dead (and not smelling of anything, any more, intriguing or not) Bob's old friend. Diefenbaker stretched his lead as far as he could, straining forward and greeting the man with a bark.

Buck Frobisher got his dogs settled, staked securely, fed and watered, and turned his attention to the dog who was still intermittently barking at him.

"Diefenbaker!" he exclaimed, ruffling the half-wolf's fur. "What are you doing here? And where's Ben? Not here? Huh. Why do I get the feeling I have a trip South in my near future, hey, boy?"

-=-=-

Lieutenant Welsh watched the two men in suits leaving through the near-empty bullpen. His brow was creased with thought. So, yeah, it had been implausible that the Mountie had just up and left on vacation after the regrettable business with Irene Zuko. It kind of came as a relief to Welsh that the Mountie wasn't that faithless; was doing his duty. It'd be no problem for Welsh to sell the cover story that Ray Vecchio had followed after Fraser to the frozen North. Those two had joined at the hip down to a fine art. But Welsh hated surprises, especially the kind that amounted to one of his men undercover under someone else's command, without so much as a by-your-leave. Just the RCMP idiot and some Fed coming by to inform him after the deal was done. Of course it was a mob thing. It was always a mob thing. Welsh thought grimly that there better be a patron saint of cops who wandered in where angels fear to tread.

**Author's Note: Hope everyone's enjoying the story. Finally, the players are in place! More to come soon. Thanks for reading and reviewing!  
**


	6. Chapter 5: Family Dinner

**Disclaimer: So not mine.**

**Chapter 5 - Family dinner  
**

The initial meet and greet went by quickly and without incident. Xu excused herself to talk business with Joey while Fraser and Ray took their bags to the rooms that they would be sleeping in. The maid led the way, pointing out a large room for Fraser and Xu, complete with a desk and chair and a small couch as well as the bed, and down the hall way from it, a much more modest room for Ray. Fraser set down his and Xu's bags and went to talk to Ray.

"How come I get put in the closet, huh?" Ray griped. "What do I have to do to get a little respect?"

"I'm sure the Scardinas meant no insult by it, Ray." Fraser said. "Ah, see, you have your own en suite bathroom, and I think - yes - if you stand on the tub you can see out the window all the way to the antique threshing machine by the barn."

Ray snorted. "Great, a bathroom with a view. Listen, Benny-" he looked around, aware even as he did it that a visual scan really wouldn't tell him if there were any bugs in the room or not- "whaddaya say to a walk before dinner? I'm kind of feeling car sick from the trip. Could use some fresh air while your ladyfriend sucks up to her boss."

Fraser stepped back in to the room and met Ray's eyes with a knowing glance. "Ah, certainly, Ray. A walk would be most pleasant."

Ray bundled up. Fraser deigned to put a scarf on with his leather jacket. Like all the clothes that Dolenz had chosen, the scarf bore a designer label, and was made of a soft natural fiber. Ray contemplated stealing it when the job was done. It was way more his style than Fraser's.

"So." Ray said, once they were away from the house. "You seemed cozier with Xu."

Fraser bit his lip, then ran his thumb over his eyebrow before answering. "We talked." he said. "She - Ray, she spoke of a lot of extenuating circumstances-"

"She cut the guy's throat like butchering a pig." Ray commented, his voice more casual than his statement.

"Yes. I haven't forgotten that, Ray. She said this was her second chance, her chance to do the right thing."

"Did you believe her?" Ray stopped walking and turned to look at his partner.

"I want to." Fraser said softly. "Ray, you know- "

"Yeah." Ray said, a quiet syllable.

"I am determined to try to give her the benefit of the doubt. I do believe everyone deserves a second chance."

"I'm not so sure, Benny."

"Ray." Fraser paused. "I have the luxury. Don't think I don't- well."

Ray's eyebrows raised. Would Fraser finish the thought? Ray had an inkling of what wasn't being said. Fraser had the luxury of trusting people because Ray was watching his back. It was a compromise he could live with.

"Sure, Benny." he said, as the silence dragged on uncomfortably. "I gotcha. Just be careful."

"Of course, Ray." Fraser said.

"We need to watch the guy who rode with Paolo." Ray said. "I don't know where, but I know I've seen him before. I've got a bad feeling about him."

Fraser looked keenly interested. "You think his identity is pertinent to the case?"

"Could be, Benny, could be. Now, are we done freezing our asses off?"

Fraser reluctantly agreed that it was time to leave the bracing fresh air and face the ordeal of dinner with their host.

---

Dinner with the Scardina family was uncannily similar to dinner with the Vecchios. The table was piled with food. Marco Scardina sat at the head of the table. Paolo sat at his right hand, and Xu, as the only woman present, had the honor of sitting at his left. Joey sat next to Paolo, Fraser sat next to Xu, and Ray next to Fraser.

Then there were the three Scardina mens' most trusted associates at the end of the table. Ray took especial notice of them. If things turned sour, these might be the men he and Fraser had to get through to get out. Joey's bodyguard was a short, dark, stocky man who introduced himself as either Tulips or Two-lips. Ray assumed it was the latter, Two-lips didn't look like a floral guy.

Marco's bodyguard was older, leaner, and definitely meaner looking. He went by the unappealing moniker of Toe. Ray didn't bother to ask the etymology of that; it was almost inevitable that it came from a well-known habit of severing said appendage from the feet of anyone who might cause him, or more particularly, his influential boss any kind of trouble. Paolo's bodyguard, Mikey, the man who had caused Ray Vecchio's radar for trouble to ping, was blond and sharply dangerous looking, the only one of the men who didn't look Italian in heritage. The chauffeurs who had brought the assorted parties to the gathering ate with the staff in the kitchen, even though they were all killers too, and all served in some fashion as bodyguards to their employees.

It was a small gathering for a mafia family meeting. Dolenz's briefing documents had made it clear that this unusual situation was Marco's doing. There was no one in his organization he trusted as much as his sons, no one he considered a lieutenant.

The conversation was noisy. Paolo and Joey were arguing loudly about the validity of certain fantasy football picks. Over antipasto, Marco seemed to have started a charm offensive on Xu, who was playing up to him for all her worth. Mikey was to be getting agitated and taking offense at the smallest possible things that his table mates did. As the soup was served, he was sniping at Toe for knocking over the salt. Fraser followed his father's most useful piece of advice second only to the words of wisdom about snow mobiles and cliffs: 'Son, you don't know what life has in store for you. So never pass up a chance to eat, sleep, or relieve yourself. You won't regret it." He ate heartily of the sustaining minestrone in front of him. To say nothing else for the Scardinas, they employed a cook who could almost rival Ma Vecchio.

Marco Scardina's attention turned to Ray. With the charm turned off, he resembled a great hungry fish, the slack skin and dead eyes in his face giving his countenance a level of malevolence absent even in his two violent sons."So, you're Vecchio. Maybe I knew your father." Fraser noticed that this caught the attention of the irritated blond man at the end of the table, but he couldn't see the significance. He filed the observation away for later examination. Perhaps Ray would have some idea.

Ray sneered. "Sure, maybe you did. No account little guy? Thought he could be a big shot? Is that who you knew? Didn't think you hung around the kind of places my old man went. You must have come up in the world."

Marco's bodyguard, Toe, bristled at Ray's aggressive tone, and made to stand up, but Marco laughed. He seemed to find something in the situation infinitely humorous.

"Siddown, Toe, it's no big thing. He's right. His father was a no account little guy, and I wasn't around those places long."

"Yeah, me neither." Ray said. "If I learned one thing from my Dad, it's that you better play at the high rollers' table, or it's not worth the ante." He slouched back in his chair, looking less like a threat to the head of the crime family.

Marco grinned, an expression that did nothing to remove the impression that he was piscine and predatory. Fraser mentally ran through the pictorial fish identification book from his grandparents' library. A pike. A big, vicious, pike. That was it. His sons resembled a bull dog, Joey, and an underfed greyhound, Paolo. But Marco was a pike, all sharp teeth and wide jaws.

"I like this guy. I like you, Vecchio." He stood up and slapped Ray on the back, hard.

"Yeah, and I like the opportunities you represent, Mr. Scardina." Ray said bluntly.

"We should talk about that." Marco said, sitting back down to dinner. "Some other time. Tonight is for pleasure, not business. And besides, Xu shoulda told you I need a Canuck for this job. But there'll be plenty o' times a Chicago cop'd be nice to have in my pocket. Detective, no less."

"Yeah, squeaky clean, too. Wouldn't want anyone looking at you cross-eyed." Ray said. "Anyone thinks I'm dirty, about all they maybe find is I beat up Frankie Zuko, but it's not like he filed charges."

Marco roared with laughter again. Fraser watched in wonderment as Ray created the sleazy character he was playing, seemingly without effort. This Ray was all the things Ray had revolted against becoming when he'd joined the police rather than follow in his father's pathetic footsteps, attempting to get in with one of the mafia families in Chicago as a made man.

Marco turned to Fraser, his smile dimming. "See, this guy, this guy I understand. I know this guy, comes up from the streets of Chicago, wants to do better than his Pappy, looking for the easy money. I oughta know him, I known a hundred of him. You, I don't make. And you got a big job to do, so that makes me nervous. And if I'm nervous, you should be nervous too."

Fraser put down his soup spoon. He hated what he was about to do, but it was important that Marco accept him as the corrupt man he was supposed to be. "A man once pointed out to me that you could live your entire life in the service of the people and have nothing yourself to show for it. My father was a Mountie. A brave, valiant man. My father gave his whole life in service, then gave his life, died without ever knowing a comfortable retirement on his own piece of land. You understand, it's the principle of the thing."

There, five sentences, not a word of untruth, but hopefully enough to be interpreted as a venal motive. Fraser picked up his soup spoon again and ate as if unconcerned by Marco's hungry regard. Peripherally, he noticed the blond push his chair out and stomp away from the table with a snarl about getting a gut cramp from lousy soup. Fraser waited for Marco's verdict.

"No, I don't understand." Marco said. "But you know what, you say you're in it for the money, fine. You know if you cross me…" he shrugged. "It won't be pleasant." He looked like he was anticipating a double-cross with some pleasure.

Fraser shrugged in turn. "Do I seem worried?" he asked.

Ray thumped Fraser on the arm. "Mr. Scardina, don't worry about Benny, he knows what's what." he said reassuringly.

---

Ray Kowalski stalked out of the farm house for a cigarette. He'd quit before, well, a few times. Stella just hated the smell once she got over her bad-boy thing when they were kids. But then he ended up in this filthy operation, pitting his role as 'Mikey', the loyal bodyguard and all-round thug, up against the collective paranoia of the Scardinas. The Scardinas really did give him a stomach ache, but the cops were the worst of it. That Vecchio. Shit, lousy sonofabitch gave all the hard working Chicago cops a bad name. Just because he was Italian American, that gave him the right to screw over all the brothers in blue, keep Chicago dirty? And the Mountie who looked like butter wouldn't melt in his mouth? "Principle, my ass." Ray muttered around his cigarette. Well, just let them take one thin dime from the Scardinas for something, any crime at all, and they'd be going down hard with the rest of the rotten family.

---

After Marco's little display of power, Xu scooted her chair over closer to Fraser and started what seemed to be a concerted campaign of reinforcing the other part of their cover. Her hand slid over to rest on Fraser's arm possessively, and she went so far, when the pasta course arrived, as to feed Fraser a piece of sausage off her fork. Fraser mustered a smile for her, and reciprocated awkwardly.

Marco leaned over conspiratorially. "You're one cold fish." he said. "I had a piece of pussy like that, I wouldn't be able to keep my hands off of her."

Fraser bristled.

"You will not speak to Miss Xu like that." he said. He didn't have to fake his indignation at the mob boss's crude language and dismissive treatment of Xu.

"Whaddaya going to do about it?" Marco sneered. His level of amusement only seemed to have grown. Conversation at the rest of the table went silent.

"If you don't apologize, I'm going to have to invite you outside." Fraser said evenly. Vecchio scowled and opened his mouth to speak, but Marco pre-empted him.

With a coarse laugh, he said, "Sorry, sorry. That was no way to talk around a lady such as yourself. Accept my apology?" to Xu.

Xu nodded graciously. "No apology necessary." she said. She ran her hand up and down Fraser's arm, then leaned over to plant a kiss on his cheek. "I'll make sure that Ben is not too upset later." She winked at Marco Scardina, and Fraser blushed bright red at the lewd implication.

After the rest of a dinner that sorely strained Fraser's acting ability and Ray's temper, Xu took Fraser's hand.

"If you'll excuse us, we'll retire now." she said.

"You kids have a good time." Marco said with a leer.

Vecchio excused himself too.

On the way back to his small bedroom, Vecchio ran into Kowalski, almost literally, coming around the corner of one of the sprawling farmhouse's many corridors. Kowalski was on his way to the kitchen to make up for his missed dinner. Kowalski dropped his shoulder and pushed past Vecchio silently.

"Hey, you got a problem with me?" Vecchio snapped. This guy was a convenient target for his frustration with the situation, with watching Xu make Fraser jump through hoops, and with the tension of having to play up to the noxious Marco Scardina.

"You want a problem?" Kowalski spun to face Vecchio again. "You want to be up in my face? You think you want that?" There was a manic glint in his eye fueled by his anger over the thought of the corruption Vecchio was bringing to the Chicago PD. He ran his hands through his hair, spiking it up.

Vecchio took a step back. The feeling of déjà vu, of knowing that he knew Paolo's bodyguard from somewhere, but just not being able to place him had grown even stronger. He never forgot a nose, and that guy's nose was ringing his bells. He had a flash, a man in uniform. His mouth fell open. Was it possible? But if not- he needed to think about it.

"You're not worth it." Vecchio said, his eyes cold.

"Whatever. Watch your back." Kowalski said. There was no reason to waste time on Vecchio if he couldn't learn anything useful from him. And there were leftovers in the kitchen with his name on them.


	7. Chapter 6: Interception

**Disclaimer: If I owned them, I'd get to play with the hat.**

**Chapter 6 - Interception**

To Fraser's great relief, Xu dropped the kittenish attitude she'd been playing up throughout dinner with the Scardina family. As soon as she'd led Fraser back to their shared bedroom and closed the door, her face and posture were all business.

"We need to check in with Corporal Dolenz." she said briskly. "It should be safe right now. I swept the room for bugs while you were conferring with Vecchio outside." A frown furrowed her brow. "We'll have to check again any time both of us have been out of the room. The device to check for bugs is in my bathroom kit. It's the pink one. It's amazing what the tech boys can hide equipment in these days." This brought a smile back to her face and a deep red blush to Fraser's as he guessed what sort of pink item the bug detector might be concealed in.

Xu dug her cellphone from her handbag and dialed the number for Dolenz's secure line in his Toronto office.

"Corporal Dolenz. Yes, it's a pleasure. No, not too bad. Quite a long drive. Constable Fraser was charming company."

Fraser listened to Xu's side of the conversation and detected nothing unusual before she passed the phone to him.

"Corporal Dolenz needs to speak to you." she said.

Dolenz checked in that Fraser was as comfortable as possible and still a go on the operation, then asked how the first day of establishing his cover with the Scardina family had progressed.

"It would seem that Marco Scardina accepted that I was corrupt." Fraser assured Corporal Dolenz. "However, he seemed quite dubious about the reasons for my disloyalty to the force."

"As expected." Dolenz replied. "I'd be suspicious if he wasn't suspicious. What about Vecchio?"

"Ah, well. Scardina seemed to accept Detective Vecchio's cover without question." Fraser said.

"I told you'd we'd have no problem there." Dolenz crowed. "He's perfect for it."

"Detective Vecchio is a fine actor."

"That's not what I meant. I mean, with his background, it's more surprising he's clean." Dolenz retorted.

Fraser's temper flared again as it had when Dolenz had first described the reasons why Ray would fit in well. Was his friend and partner never to shake the stereotype? Not even after all it had cost him, seeing his childhood sweetheart gunned down in front of him? Again Fraser was humbled that Ray would come here now and make this pretense when his heart must be sore at even associating with yet another soulless mafioso.

"Sir, I must protest. As I've assured you, Detective Vecchio is a good man. One of the best." Fraser said.

"I hope so. I'm counting on it." Dolenz said, his tone unusually emotional. "I won't lie, that's a dangerous job that you're doing, and however it came about it is for the best that you have someone other than Xu to rely upon."

Dolenz switched back to a businesslike tone. "Now, you're to contact me one more time tomorrow, then it's up to you when it's appropriate to check in. Understood, Constable?"

"Understood, Sir." Fraser said. He was concerned about the lack of trust that Corporal Dolenz had just admitted toward Xu, but it was too late to question it.

"Let me talk to Xu again." Dolenz said, and Fraser handed over the phone.

After Xu ended the call, Fraser abruptly realized that she was standing uncomfortably close to him. Clearing his throat, he took a step back. She swayed forward, a motion that managed to look unstudied.

Fraser stepped back again and found himself up against a chest of drawers.

"I'll just - I would like to take a bath now, and retire to bed, if that won't inconvenience you. Of course, I'll sleep on the floor." he said.

"Come on, it's early yet." Xu said. "There are much more exciting things to do than sleep, although a bath sounds promising." Her small hand came up to touch the neckline of his soft, red sweater. Fraser stilled, repressing a shiver as he remembered the unwanted sensuality of that touch, and the play of a deadly knife, his own hunting knife, in the deceptively fine-boned fingers. He felt a mix of horror and loneliness, and sheer pity for the life Xu had lead that taught her to use her body and other people's needs to get what she wanted.

"Xu." he said gently. "You don't have to do this." He took her hand off his sweater and held it for a moment before letting it drop. "If you want a second chance, if you want to make amends, this isn't the way to go about it."

Xu's mascara tinted lashes fell over her eyes, and her head bowed slightly. But Fraser thought he caught a flash of anger on her face before her cultivated expression of remorse settled.

"I'm sorry," she said. "I do find you very attractive and I had thought - but it was not appropriate - I do apologize and you need not sleep on the floor." With a wry smile she looked up again. "I promise I won't bite."

Fraser had no doubt that she meant that literally.

"No, Xu, I would rather sleep on the floor." Fraser said, and Xu turned and stalked off, opening her suitcase and beginning to unpack.

Fraser's code of honor, old fashioned though it might be, did not encompass sleeping in the same bed as someone who had attempted unsuccessfully to seduce him, outside of any improbable body-heat sharing necessity. He'd not been terribly comfortable in the company of women before Victoria. And after Victoria, how could he trust himself? He had failed and fallen and how could he trust that he wouldn't make the same mistakes again if he gave temptation one single centimeter?

No matter the compassion he felt for Xu after hearing her story, the revulsion he felt for her actions in the service of her spymasters must continue to outweigh it for the sake of his sanity. He had long years of practice overruling the hopefulness his ignorant body felt at the prospect of physical companionship, release. And even the poorest philosopher must see the falsehood of the whispers the dark part of his mind made. No, just because Victoria had been corrupted and he had loved Victoria did not mean he was doomed only to seek the comfort his heart cried out for with someone who had already shown him the deepest corruption of her soul.

He would not punish himself for the mistakes with Victoria by handing his body over to one who had taken pleasure in seeing him suffer. Poetic martyrdom was as self-indulgent as the romantic streak that got him into the mess with Victoria in the first place. A disciplined attempt to remedy the wrongs that he'd done, particularly to Ray, and to the people he'd let down by not being the exemplar of the law that he strove to be, was a much more pragmatic and appropriate response to the guilt he carried.

A bath and an early bed time on the adequately uncomfortable floor sounded like just the thing.

-=-=-

The second day of the operation, the first full day that Ray and Fraser were to spend undercover, started slowly and continued at a glacial pace that was almost calculated to drive Ray Vecchio crazy with waiting.

Ray rose at his usual time and found that breakfast was available in the kitchen. The Scardinas had staff, minimal, but nevertheless present, to take care of pesky details like food and laundry. Ray didn't feel much like eating but the coffee was truly excellent. He found Fraser standing outside on the generous back porch of the sprawling old house, watching fields that to Ray appeared still and empty.

"What's up?" Ray asked.

Fraser blinked. "Birds. Primarily the North American Crow, or Corvus brachyrhynchos. A large gathering, what one would call a murder, hunting insects in that field." He nodded toward a field some distance from the house. "There is an Inuit myth that the Crow stole daylight and brought it to the people of the North-"

Ray scrubbed at the back of his head with his hand. Fraser was on a roll, and could keep going for hours if he wasn't interrupted. "That's great Benny, but I meant, what's up with the Scardinas? What's going on today?"

"Oh." Fraser's mouth snapped shut before he could discuss the similarities and differences between this myth and the rather more gory Greek myth of of Prometheus.

"Apparently the Scardinas and Xu are discussing business today, and we aren't included in that particular inner circle." Fraser said. "Marco Scardina, who seems to be a very early riser, indicated that we're free to entertain ourselves as we see fit. I was planning on going for a long walk."

Vecchio left Fraser to his walk. The clock in the kitchen showed that he had at least four hours to pass before he could even cut into the boredom with more food. He cajoled another cup of the excellent coffee out of the cook, and spent a brief time flirting with the woman, but she had a lot to do to feed a household of the current size of the Scardina's meeting, and Ray soon got out from underfoot.

One of the rooms of the house was an old-fashioned parlor, featuring a joyless selection of leather-bound books. chintzy but overly-loved couches, and, Ray found after poking around, a selection of games. He very much doubted that there was anyone about who wanted to join him in a rousing game of Uno, but there were a couple of packs of playing cards, and the first pack he counted through had a full complement of fifty two cards and two jokers.

Solitaire wasn't Ray's game. As much strain as it was to pretend to be something he wasn't, Ray still didn't hesitate to suggest a game of poker when Two-lips and Toe walked into the room.

Keeping up his cover wasn't as difficult while playing poker. It was a bluffing game, and Ray could bluff with the best of them, and bullshit with the best of them, and feeding Two-lips and Toe a line of the highest grade BS proved almost entertaining. It was still not entertaining enough that Ray didn't feel a constant tension tingling down his spine.

-=-=-

Kowalski hated this part of his assignment. Waiting around. The big boys (and apparently, girl) were talking behind closed doors and the hired guns could go piss up a rope. Great. He couldn't stay inside. It was bitter cold outside, but not far from the house there was an old wooden fence and someone long ago had set up tin cans along it for shooting practice. Ray took a savage satisfaction in blasting the hell out of every single rusted can, then putting them back up on the fence and repeating the performance. It was a waste of ammunition, but the Scardinas sure had plenty of that around. It would have been more satisfying with the MP7 Paolo gave him, but Paolo wouldn't stand for the noise, so it was a silenced pistol instead.

Kowalski finished his second round of letting off steam when he felt eyes on him. He pointed the pistol at the ground and turned to see who'd set off the internal radar that had kept him safe more times than he cared to count. The Mountie, the dirty one, was standing there, decked out in designer jeans and a leather jacket, hair blowing hatless in the frigid wind just as if it were spring already. Ray bared his teeth. Mikey wasn't supposed to be hostile to these people, so he'd make something like a smile and the guy would just have to deal with it.

"Wanna shoot?" Kowalski offered. Might as well see the Mountie's mettle. He didn't look like a hit man. If he was as much of a pussycat as he looked, Joey was going to be in shit with his old man and Paolo for bringing him along when they needed a real professional.

"I should like that, thank you." Fraser said. He felt the tension of the day acutely, and even a long, solitary walk hadn't taken the edge off the creeping feeling at the back of his neck that all was not as it should be. Focussing his attention on one single objective, hitting the target, should help clear his mind of the unneeded distraction of being constantly on edge. It wasn't strictly legal for him to shoot using the other man's gun without at least knowing that the weapon was licensed to him, but for the sake of his cover he could hardly put up a fuss on that account. Bending a statute to appear to be a man comfortable with breaking the law made Fraser feel oddly guilty. But his ability to be true to himself had been hampered since the moment he'd given in to Corporal Dolenz's coercion and agreed to take on the undercover role.

Ray handed Fraser the pistol. Fraser took the proffered weapon and checked that it was loaded correctly. Ray set the cans back up on the fence.

Fraser stood with his feet slightly apart. It really wasn't challenging shooting, and he was supposed to be here as a crack marksman. With that, he calculated that he should hold back nothing. Taking one steadying breath, he quickly shot all of the cans off their perch.

"Not bad," Kowalski said. "I'd like to see how you do from farther away. You wanna put money on me shooting better than you?"

Before Fraser could catch himself he replied, "Oh, thank you kindly, but I never gamble."

He reproached himself immediately but it was too late to take the words back. The twitchy blond bodyguard was staring at him quizzically, his eyes drilling into Fraser.

"Okay. Whatever." Kowalski eventually said. "No bet, but I got nothing better to do than waste Mr. Scardina's ammo, so if you don't mind a friendly competition...?"

He bared his teeth again in the vicious mockery of a smile that Fraser found disconcerting and yet compelling. This man seemed something other than the common line of mob thug, and he'd had first hand experience of what those men were like.

"I don't see why not." Fraser agreed.

Each man determined to take the measure of the other.

-=-=-

Lunch put an end to the 'friendly' poker and marksmanship contests, and Ray Vecchio gravitated back to Fraser, nervous about his sometimes naive partner wandering alone among these sharks. He hadn't voiced his suspicions about Mikey to Fraser, but whatever the blond's game was, Ray would rather he didn't play it with Fraser as a pawn.

Yet another room in the house was set up as a television room, and Two-lips found a college football game, which satisfied everyone but Fraser, who had the good sense to mind a look of warning from Ray and sit quietly to endure it, and Ray's snide comments about the preferability of football to hockey.

The brewing tension of the long, slow day came to a head at half time. Fraser didn't understand quite what sparked things, but evidently Ray Vecchio said something that the man known as Mikey regarded as a deadly insult toward one of his favored players, following a series of sniping comments back and forth by the two men. Possibly, Mikey was still unhappy about being outshot by Fraser earlier.

Vecchio was on his feet and headed to the kitchen for beer when he threw the insulting comment over his shoulder. Mikey propelled himself upward, already swinging. Two-lips and Toe seemed happy to watch, getting to their feet with hollers of encouragement, but Fraser took no such pleasure in seeing Ray Vecchio block the thrown punch and start swinging back.

"Ray!" Fraser said, quickly rising and moving between the two combatants. He felt a loose blow to his shoulder and remembered his father's sage advice about not getting between fighting dogs, but he could not allow his friend to put himself in danger. Fraser grabbed Ray Vecchio by the shoulders and gently propelled him backwards, while looking over his shoulder into the frustrated face of Mikey.

"Whatever Ray said, I am sure he didn't mean to cause offense." he assured the angry bodyguard.

Mikey dropped his hands to his sides and backed off with an angry expression.

"Yeah, whatever." he said, and turned sharply and walked out of the room.

Vecchio glared at his back, but then grudgingly returned to watching the football game, his silence a rebuke to Fraser for interfering.

Ray Kowalski stalked outside berating himself. No matter how much the dirty cop might piss him off just by breathing the same air, there was no excuse for losing his temper that badly. The case was getting to him. Posing as the violent Mikey was not so subtly influencing his thoughts and feelings, for one thing. On top of that, the Mountie was completely unnerving, unreadable and dangerous because of that. Kowalski thought he would have liked the guy, if it weren't for the whole 'working for the mob' part. But that made no sense, it just didn't read right with the Mountie's overall aura of wholesomeness. If undercover work wasn't disorienting enough, dealing with this weird situation was putting him over the edge, and Kowalski focussed on deep, calming breaths. He just couldn't afford to lose it like that again.

-=-=-

Dinner was quieter than the previous night, with Kowalski sulking at one end of the table and Vecchio frigidly silent at the other. The Scardinas seemed relaxed but subdued after a long day of talking business. Fraser was relieved not to have to do much to keep up his part of the cover, though, in an uncomfortable repeat of the night before, Xu was flirty and physically demonstrative. Fraser played along to the best of his ability, feeling his face turn a glowing red at more than one instant.

Fraser and Xu were able to report afterwards to Dolenz that the day had been relatively uneventful. Fraser didn't think Vecchio's little altercation needed to be shared with the smug corporal.

"This is your last scheduled contact." Dolenz reminded Fraser unnecessarily. "Stay safe, and don't contact me again until you have information about the planned hit to pass on."

Joey, Two-lips and Toe bursting through the door of the bedroom two hours later, while Fraser was sleeping, at the same time as Mikey and Paolo kicked in Ray Vecchio's door, probably wasn't the way Dolenz wanted them to stay safe.

Fraser sprung up from his resting place on the floor, placing himself between Xu and the door, a bewildered expression turning to resigned calm as the men pushed into the room. He was shaking the heaviness of sleep off, but had no real chance to react before the action was upon him.

Two-lips wrenched Fraser's arm behind his back. Fraser fought the hold, throwing his whole body into resisting. Fraser watched with horror as the burly Toe subdued Xu, who was fighting like a wildcat, to put her in the same restraining position. It was a moot point, because Joey Scardina was right in front of Fraser with a gun, a sneering laugh coming forth at Fraser's struggles.

"Calm down, or your girlfriend gets ventilated." Joey said. "A little birdy tells us you're here for a double-cross. You're gonna answer some questions, before we show you what traitors get.


	8. Chapter 7: Prometheus

**Disclaimer - Not for personal gain. No infringement intended. No Mounties harmed in the production of this story.**

**Chapter 7 - Prometheus**

Ray Vecchio came awake in a state of confusion and then panic as Paolo and Mikey's hands grabbed at him and pulled him from the bed. His first reaction was to fight, but barefoot in pajamas and still hazy with sleep, he was at a disadvantage. Paolo had him on the ground in seconds, his foot coming out to connect with Ray's stomach and rib cage repeatedly until all Ray could do was curl in a ball and wait for it to stop.

Kowalski was, well, confused and panicky too. But he couldn't afford to be. He had to be Mikey and get some kicks of his own in on this man who apparently _wasn't_ corrupt at all, was undercover like him, and oh, god, was his cover safe? Who had ratted Vecchio out? Someone in the Chicago PD? Kowalski had to protect his cover, _had to_, even if it meant he couldn't protect Vecchio right now. It was his only hope of getting all of them out of there alive at the end of things.

Paolo got in one last vicious kick, catching Vecchio in the temple.

"Tie him up good and lock the door while we deal with the other two." he ordered Kowalski. Using nylon rope Paolo told him to bring with him when the mob man told him it was time to pay Vecchio a visit, Kowalski bound Vecchio firmly but gently. He checked his pulse. It was strong and steady and Kowalski sighed with a measure of relief that at least so far Paolo hadn't managed to kill Vecchio, before leaving Vecchio hogtied on the floor and locking the door behind him.

-=-=-

Fraser watched Toe drag Xu off in one direction while he was roughly manhandled to the small cellar under the farm house. Two-lips wasn't being gentle, but he wasn't going out of his way to cause pain. Down a set of stone stairs, the cellar was dark and dank, and lit by a single fixture projecting from one wall. There was a thin pillar from floor to ceiling in the middle of the room.

"Put your arms round that." Joey said. Two-lips pushed Fraser into position and Joey snapped handcuffs onto his wrists, chaining him to the pillar. He had room to slide down and sit, but only by awkwardly hugging the cold concrete support. Fraser stayed standing, preferring to keep his dignity while he could.

Paolo trotted down the stairs looking as smug as Joey had.

"Mountie." he said. "It's late, and we're gonna talk in the morning, but some of us need our beauty sleep. Now Two-lips, there's no hope of him turnin' into a prince, so he's gonna stay awake with you. If you start to fall asleep..."

Paolo drew back his hand and slapped Fraser hard, sending his head snapping backwards.

"...he'll wake you up. If you still can't manage..."

Paolo stepped behind Fraser and delivered a sharp and sudden kidney punch.

"So you just wait here and think about what you're gonna say to me tomorrow that's gonna stop me from killing your girlfriend and your partner in front of you, then capping you. The rest of us are gonna go back to bed."

Paolo and Joey left the cellar. Two-lips departed briefly but returned with a kitchen chair, an ashtray, and a cup of coffee. He lit a cigarette. "Gotta keep myself awake. Hope it doesn't bother you." he said conversationally to Fraser.

Fraser opted to say nothing.

-=-=-

After leaving Vecchio trussed up like a Thanksgiving turkey, Ray Kowalski sought out Paolo Scardina to find out what was going on. He found Paolo, Marco, Joey, and Toe in Marco's personal den, a dark wood-paneled room with lushly erotic Victorian paintings on the walls, and deep red leather chairs around a fireplace. The fire was blazing, and the Scardina men had brandy glasses in their hands. This didn't surprise Ray. What surprised him was the figure perched on the arm of Joey Scardina's chair.

"But- she-!" Ray blurted, pointing at Xu. "I thought she was with them." was all he could manage.

Marco Scardina laughed. Ray noticed that while the Scardinas all looked smugly amused, Marco's bodyguard Toe had a sour expression on his face.

"Just a small prank, Mikey." Paolo said. "Relax. Siddown. Have some brandy." He gestured expansively.

Ray poured himself a brandy and stood in front of the fire, waiting for an explanation. Paolo provided it.

"You see, Xu comes to Joey straight up and tells him she's being run by the Canadians and the Americans and she wants out, a nice position with our organization in sunny Sicily down the line. Joey sees that she's got... a certain value to us... feeding us information and feeding back bullcrap to the Feds."

Joey grinned, looking inordinately pleased with his find. Ray shook his head slightly. Xu seemed pretty sharp. He guessed she targeted Joey because she could flatter his sense of self-importance.

Joey piped up. "So then Pop says he needs this job done and Xu says she has the perfect setup. The Mountie is so clean he squeaks and she can get him under her thumb."

Ray began to grasp that there was no insider at the CPD. The whole thing was a setup from the start, a trap for Constable Fraser. He felt a guilty relief that his own cover was probably quite safe.

Xu spoke next. "Detective Vecchio insisting on coming along was an unexpected bonus. I've worked hard to make our Fraser feel that he needs to protect me, but frankly, having his partner as leverage is even better."

"Yeah." Marco agreed. "Joey, you've done good so far. Xu, the Mountie's boss thinks his cover is all set, right?"

Xu nodded. "Corporal Dolenz sees this whole operation as an opportunity to gain personal glory by taking you down. He was eager to believe that Constable Fraser was safely established undercover. And I will be able to pass back false information about who Fraser's target will be when we move on the actual target. I promise, it'll be smooth as silk. Benton is sure to cooperate."

Paolo cracked his knuckles. "I'm going to see to that." he said.

Ray took a deep swallow of his brandy. Paolo was an inventive sadist, through and through. Whatever he had planned to ensure the Mountie's cooperation was bound to be unpleasant.

"Is that really necessary?" Xu asked. "I assure you, protecting my safety and that of his bosom friend Ray Vecchio will be enough motivation."

Kowalski detected a note of prurient curiosity in her question. He wasn't entirely sure it was sincere, but for whatever reason, she still wanted the men to believe she had full control of the Mountie.

Joey Scardina reached up from his chair to pat her thigh.

"Don't worry, sweetcheeks." he said. "Paolo knows what he's doin'."

Xu's smile looked forced to Ray.

"Of course. I apologize." she said.

"No need." Paolo said. "But yeah, I do know what I'm doin'. Right now your boy will say he'll do the job for us under the threat to you and his friend, sure. But he'll still be trying to wiggle his way out any way he can. Give me a day with him and I'll have him broken down enough to be too scared to say boo. He'll say he'll do our job and he'll do it."

His tone of voice was enough to send chills down Kowalski's spine.

Toe grumbled. "I still don't see why you didn't tell me. I need to know this stuff, boss. You got undercover cops around, I should know that."

Ray filed that away. Toe would never be disloyal to Marco, but it was good to know he had a grievance. Any chink in the fortress of the family's loyalties was there to be exploited.

"No harm done." Marco said. He would tolerate, to a point, being questioned by Toe. "I just wanted to be sure our patsy didn't realize he'd been played the whole way. More convincing if you guys didn't know all along."

Toe grunted reluctant assent.

Not for the first time, Ray wished desperately that his cover allowed for a cell phone. Not that there'd be coverage out in the middle of Indiana, but now that he knew what was going down, he needed to contact his captain, get things rolling. He was expected to sit on his hands, gather evidence? But that'd been under the serious misconception that Fraser was bent.

-=-=-

Fraser didn't know what time it was when Paolo reappeared in the cellar. He knew that he desperately needed sleep. He knew it had probably been all night. Some time ago, Two-Lips had been replaced by Joey Scardina, whose techniques for keeping Fraser from falling asleep included a bucket of ice-water, and, like Two-Lips, a generous sampling of body blows. Both were careful to avoid marking his face, but otherwise, ruthless. Two-lips's chain smoking made Fraser's throat ache for water, and at least Joey spared him that.

Paolo came bearing two items, both long, narrow rods. A broomstick, and, Fraser identified with a sick feeling in his stomach, and old fashioned electrified cattle prod. Unlike the more powerful stun guns used by riot police and unethical interrogators the world over, cattle prods weren't designed to do more than cause a short, sharp burst of localized pain. But over the course of hours, well, it was nothing to look forward to. What information could Paolo want from him? Whatever it was, Fraser determined to stand fast.

"Good morning." Paolo said jovially. "Still awake? Good! My brother got you up here to do a job, and the way I see it, even though it turns out you're a fuckin' narc, I'm going to make it damn hard for you to say no."

He stood close to the pillar that Fraser slumped against, looking self-satisfied and smelling tantalizingly of coffee and bacon and fried potatoes. Fraser's stomach rumbled involuntarily but he guessed that by the time the morning was over he'd be glad he hadn't eaten.

"Now, we could do it this way. I could say you make the hit or I take out your girlfriend and your partner, and I know you'd say you were going to do it just to save their lives. And we both know you really wouldn't mean a word of it. You'd just be buying time and wasting mine. You got a track record of getting out of trouble, and I figure you'd gamble on that. So I'm not going to give you the option of saying yes, right now, you got me?"

"What if I don't say yes? What if I say no? What if I refuse to help you?" Fraser asked.

Paolo smiled. "I got two hostages to your good behavior. I only need to keep one alive. Capiche?"

"I understand." Fraser said, slightly hoarsely.

"I'm gonna teach you why you need to mean it when you say yes, what will happen to you and both your friends if you even think about betraying me... then when we're done, I'll ask you, and you'll say yes, and then you'll do our dirty little job for us without trying to find a way out."

He sounded calm. Too calm for Fraser's comfort. Fraser couldn't think of anything to say that would make a single bit of difference to the mafia man's cold plan.

When Paolo uncuffed his hands from around the pillar, Fraser knew he should fight, make some move to escape. But his muscles were stiff from being forced into one position all night, and his back and legs were screaming from the growing bruises inflicted on him in the name of keeping him awake. He staggered upright, searching for the opportunity to attack. Paolo rapped him across the shoulders with the broomstick.

"Knees." Paolo ordered.

Fraser resisted sullenly, and Paolo swept the broomstick in a sharp strike across the back of his knees. Fraser stumbled and dropped.

Paolo re-cuffed Fraser's hands behind his back and set the broomstick so it lay across the crooks of his knees. Fraser groaned internally. Although it felt like no weight at all now, he knew that holding the kneeling position with the wooden rod there would be a passive but effective torment for his whole body. He glared defiance at Paolo.

"You're a smart guy so you've got this one figured out." Paolo said. "Nice and easy for me. You stay kneeling like that, don't move, or-"

He unbuttoned Fraser's pajama top, peeling it down off Fraser's shoulders so it bunched on his cuffed arms, exposing his back and chest. Then came the expected demonstration. Fraser braced mentally for it, the bulky old cattle prod, the two metal tips pressed against his sternum and then, the arc of electricity, a pain that made him jolt back involuntarily, eyes squeezed closed for the long count of seconds that Paolo held the prod on him.

"There'll be someone here watchin' you all day." Paolo said. "Me or one of the others. You hold the kneeling position all day and we'll talk. You break it, and you get to do it all over tomorrow. We have plenty of time. Got me?"

"Understood." Fraser said wearily. It was a test he was being set up to fail. Paolo was canny about breaking a man's spirit without any great damage to his body.

-=-=-

Ray Vecchio spent the night alternately sleeping and passed out. He couldn't tell the two states apart but he woke up far groggier than could be accounted for by a simple night of sleep unmediated by a nasty kick to the head. By the time a late dawn broke, he was feeling achy and sore, but ready to try and tackle the bonds that Mikey had put him in. He had no idea where Fraser was, no idea if he was even still alive. But he guessed that if they wanted to kill Fraser they probably wouldn't have bothered to keep Ray alive either. So, where there was life, there was hope. Hope that between them they could pull off yet another miraculous escape and then, well, then Ray was going to find out who was responsible for blowing their cover with the Scardinas, which sorry sonofabitch in the Chicago PD was in their pay, and make that person's life an unimaginable hell.

Ray started working on the ropes around his wrists. Although his wrists were tied behind his back and a length of rope ran down to his bound ankles, the whole setup was just a shade looser and gentler than he would have suspected. Could Mikey have done that intentionally?

As Ray fidgeted impatiently with the rope, he worked to put a name to that face. It had been bugging him since they arrived, the irritation leading to the juvenile flare-up and punches being thrown. He had been working on the assumption that he knew Mikey from the criminal element. An associate of someone he'd arrested, something like that. But now he felt certain he was approaching things incorrectly. His fingers worked nimbly as his mind ticked over busily, reviewing other circumstances in which he could have seen the blond man.

Finally, it came to him. A couple of years back. A citation for bravery, he'd been there to see it presented. Who? Something funny about it. Oh... geez, of course. Another Ray. Ray- something Polish? Ray Krakowski? Nah... It provided the perfect distraction while he slowly loosened a knot. The first knot holding him slipped free right as Ray whispered triumphantly. "Kowalski." He was sure now. There was another cop here, someone he could look to to help him get Benny out. Hope lightened his heart.

**Author's Note: A little dark from here out, but my promise stands that I'll put them back the way I found them! **


	9. Chapter 8: Going Under

**Disclaimer: Borrowed.  
**

**Chapter 8 - Going Under**

Paolo wasn't so bad.

For one thing, the switch to the kneeling position, although it would be hard and painful to hold over the course of the day, was at least a change from standing up with his arms around the pillar, and Fraser allowed himself to feel every moment of the relief of muscles strained from being still too long while it lasted.

For another, although Paolo seemed to enjoy demonstrating with the cattle prod what would happen if Fraser broke position, after the one zap, he'd settled down in the one chair in the room with the Gary, Indiana Post-Tribune, and was now entertaining his captive audience by reading the police blotter out loud.

"Seems some guy has a personal hygiene problem." Paolo said, "'Man arrested for taking twenty one dollars' woo, twenny one dollars, big bucks there, 'worth of grooming items and medication from the Safeway in Merrillville. The local man took deodorant, shampoo, razors, aftershave and hemorrhoid cream from the store, Tuesday, police said.'" Paolo snickered. "Sounds like the heist of the century."

Fraser let the words wash over him as Paolo continued to read from the paper and mock the local small-time crime. It was almost soothing, reminding him of quieter times in Inuvik, where a crime wave was likely to be a drunken truck driver accidentally parking in the wrong place, or out of season hunters. So much simpler than the dark world he found himself in now. As the tension of the new position he had to hold started to set in and the relief of cramped muscles relaxing turned to new burning cramps, Fraser let himself drift to a white, far distant world, a cold clean outdoor place where he knew a home.

Eventually Paolo tired of the paltry amusement of the local paper. He stood and stretched ostentatiously, making a show of cracking his neck and stretching his arms over his head.

"Feels pretty good." he said, walking around to stand behind Fraser. "How you doin' now?"

"Well enough." Fraser replied shortly, wanting to give his tormentor no satisfaction.

"Huh. I don't think so." Paolo replied. His hand stroked lightly across Fraser's shoulders, making Fraser twitch under the touch. "I bet your muscles are really beginning to seize up there. You wish you could move, you're trying hard not to obsess about maybe just shiftin' so as you are a bit less tensed up, but if you did, it wouldn't help, and you know I'd zap you, so you're hanging in there. But you know it hasn't been that long and it's only gonna get worse."

Paolo walked around and squatted down so he could look Fraser in the eyes. "And it _is_ gonna get worse. Believe me. By the end of the day you'll pick getting hit with the cattle prod over stayin' still another second, and then you'll know you have to do it all over. And you'll start to see you'll do anythin' to avoid going through this again, you'll do exactly what you're told."

He grinned smugly. "Especially when you start thinkin' of how much you don't want that hot bitch of a lover of yours goin' through this or what else worse I can think up for her. I just looked around the outbuildings, found the broomstick, this nasty old cattle prod. You wanna spend some time thinkin' of what I might do to her, or that partner of yours, your best buddy there."

Paolo stood up and stalked up the stairs out of the cellar. Toe came to replace him. Toe was much less psychological and much more physical in his application of torment. He stalked around with the cattle prod in hand until he detected the minutest twitch that could be interpreted as disobedience and rewarded each and every small motion with a ruthless application of the electrical shock. Fraser found himself tensing every muscle to the point of extreme discomfort in a vain effort to avoid the capricious attacks. He knew that Toe wanted him to move, wanted him to fail, but there was simply no way to hold a human body to the utter stillness that would have been required to avoid the punishment. He lost track of the number of times he transgressed, the number of times Toe took it out on him.

By the time Toe was replaced by Mikey, Fraser had bitten his lip bloody trying to control his reaction to the pain.

-=-=-

Ray Vecchio worked his wrists loose, leaving him free to get to work on his ankles. His head was pounding, his torso felt like a mass of bruises from the abuse it had taken, and he could kill for a cup of coffee, not to mention breakfast. But, on the up side, he'd apparently been left to his own devices, no-one routinely checking in on him. He guessed that the men must assume Mikey had done a thorough job of securing him. He'd have to thank Kowalski later for half-assing it just enough to make it possible, if not easy, to get loose.

He thought about what he was going to do as soon as he got entirely free of the ropes. First, bathroom. And water from the faucet. Then, hope like hell he had any cell phone reception out here. Dolenz had made a big fuss about Xu having a special phone - some kind of satellite hookup, damn spooks - but he could pray to get through to someone. Not 911. What could the local cops possibly do about this? Welsh. He'd call Welsh.

The last knot came free. Ray set the rope aside. He might need to play possum later, make like he was still tied up in knots. But for now, he stood and stretched, rubbed his wrists and rotated his shoulders, and then set about his agenda silently.

The phone was in the bottom of his luggage. Ray dialed the Chicago area code and the familiar digits of Welsh's office line. He was almost certain that the workaholic Lieutenant would be in the office now. A chirping sound let him know he didn't have enough signal. Ray sighed and stood right next to the window, and redialed. He crossed his fingers. He didn't need great reception. Just enough. This time the call connected.

"--Welsh --" the voice on the other end of the line was broken and staticky.

"Lieutenant, it's Vecchio." Ray said urgently.

"-- is this?--" Welsh replied.

"Vecchio. Vecchio." Ray hissed, not daring to raise his voice.

"--Vecchio?--" was all he heard of Welsh's answer.

Then the phone went dead. Ray cursed and tried to redial but the battery had unequivocally given up the ghost. So much for that. He couldn't hope Welsh could act on what was little more than a distress signal sent up in the dark.

What else to do? Handle things on his own. Ray sighed. The odds were long. And doing anything in daylight was probably suicidal. Which meant waiting out the day, not knowing where Fraser was, or how he was being treated.

-=-=-

Kowalski looked at the man kneeling in front of him. He felt helpless. This was the worst, worst part of undercover work of this kind. In theory, he should be able to set aside his compassion and do the job he had to. He couldn't let on to the Mountie that they were on the same side. The man was under severe duress. Ray didn't know if he'd hold on or break down and if he broke down, and if Ray had admitted to him that he wasn't really Mikey, wasn't really Paolo Scardina's lapdog, then odds were the Mountie would spill all that too, and it would be all over for them.

But he just couldn't bring himself to add to the proud man's torment. The Mountie was still holding himself up with dignity and a look of pure, diamond-hard defiance in his eyes. Ray couldn't help him, not right now, not until they were on the road somewhere on the way to this hit the Mountie was supposed to make for Marco Scardina. Not until they were somewhere he could get to a pay phone and call his Captain, get the Mountie and Ray Vecchio bailed out of the mess without blowing his own cover. Ray couldn't help the Mountie right now, but he'd be damned if he was going to hurt him, either. Nothing was worth having that stain on his soul. He'd done things, done wicked things to prove himself to Paolo Scardina that would always haunt him. But he'd told himself the men he'd hurt were all criminals too, rival mobsters, no-one worth tearing his heart out over. This was different. In front of him knelt a man Ray believed might be truly good, honorable and brave.

Ray leaned down and wiped the blood off Fraser's mouth with the sleeve of his shirt.

"Listen. I got a double shift down here on account of Two-lips stayed up babysittin' yer last night." he said, in Mikey's heavy tones, "So I gotta sit here for a while, an' you better believe I don't like that, an' it's all down to you. Get me good, buddy. I ain't into this sick torture shit, I don't wanna have to use that thing on you." He gestured at the cattle prod that lay on the floor behind Fraser. "So you just do what you're supposed to an' keep yer mouth _shut_ an' you an' me'll be good. Got it?"

Fraser nodded. He felt weak with fatigue and relief that this man wasn't going to torment him actively the way Toe had, or prod at him verbally like Paolo Scardina. He just had to get himself back to that snowy wilderness in his mind, hold himself still even though the light weight of the broomstick now burned like a brand where it pressed unmoving in the crook of his knees, even though his head felt heavy, the muscles of his neck aflame with the sheer strain of holding still and steady while bent unnaturally. It was far worse than standing sentry, where at least the posture was somewhat comfortable to hold, and the period he had to endure much shorter, and finite. He willed himself deep into his mind, losing a part of himself, his eyes glazing over.

Ray slumped in the chair, arms crossed. This whole farce should be over soon, Marco didn't have the patience to let Paolo really go to town on the Mountie. He wanted them to move the next day, head up to Canada. 'Mikey' still hadn't been let in on who the target was, who Fraser was supposed to assassinate. Marco, Paolo, and Xu had been really smug about the false leads Xu was planting with her contact. Dolenz. RCMP. What a mess.

Fraser roused himself after some time had passed. The man guarding him appeared lost in thought, inattentive. Fraser braced himself mentally. Enough of drifting, enough self-indulgence. If there was the opportunity to escape, he was duty bound to take it. A strong, rational part of his mind pointed out that handcuffed, half-naked in pajama bottoms, stiff, sore and exhausted, he had little chance of getting far even if he overcame his guard. But who knew what other chances would come? And what was being done to Ray and Xu? His emotions clamored at him - he got Ray into this situation, he had to get him out - and Fraser steeled himself to act. The spirit was willing, but- all he managed to do was fall over, his fatigued muscles trembling wildly.

Kowalski shot to his feet. Properly speaking, he should punish the prisoner now. If Paolo found out he hadn't, it could be trouble. But all he could bring himself to do was gently lift Fraser back to his knees.

"Don't be stupid." he said, gruffly.

Fraser's head hung. So much for taking the initiative. A rush of despair flooded over him. He counseled himself in vain to wait, to hope that when Paolo was done, when he was set to the task of assassination, he'd be better able to do what he had to, he'd find a way out, if not for him, at least for Ray and for Xu. They didn't deserve to die just because he was weak.

By the time Paolo came down to relieve Mikey, Fraser was slumped over, far from the tidy posture he should be holding. Paolo gave him the expected hell for it. Fraser held himself aloof from the pain as Paolo unleashed more burning shocks from the prod. Fraser found himself oddly happy that Mikey hadn't used it on him. He felt a warm gratitude for the simple lack of cruelty. A mental note chimed, warning him that he was coming to like and identify with one of his captors. Paolo eventually pushed Fraser down onto the cold stone floor.

"I told you you'd screw it up, so you'll be kneelin' in that position again tomorrow." Paolo said with a smirk in his voice. "You can rest now, but there'll be someone along to wake you up every half hour."

The thought of asking for water, even a little bit, crossed Fraser's mind before Paolo left him alone in the cellar. But he couldn't bring himself to do it. He wouldn't let Paolo win. He closed his eyes and let exhaustion steal awareness from him.

-=-=-

Buck Frobisher cleared customs with Diefenbaker in record time. The distinguished Mountie attributed this to his formidable glare and Diefenbaker's obvious status as a police dog. The relieved looking customs officers who sent him on his way would never say otherwise. O'Hare airport was large and confusing, but Buck found the taxi stand quickly by following the exodus of other passengers, and the determined wolf who knew where he was going.

Entering a taxi, Buck thought about where to direct the driver. The Consulate staff, he had to say, had not impressed him on his last visit to the United States. On the other hand, young Ben seemed to have found loyal friends among the Chicago Police Department.

With an autocratic wave of his hand, Buck directed: "Take me to the twenty seventh district Police headquarters, and step on it!"

The driver looked nervously at the wolf who was panting over his shoulder, and determined to make the drive as quickly as possible.

**Author's Note: As always, thanks for reading and responding! Updates may be a little slow thanks to the NHL playoff season. Fraser made me watch hockey. (Go Bruins!)  
**


	10. Chapter 9: Knowing You

**Disclaimer - If they were mine, I'd be living on residuals. I get nothing from them but pleasure.**

**Chapter 9 - Knowing You  
**

While Fraser spent the day learning the limitations of his musculoskeletal structure and enduring Paolo's crude attempts on his mental fortitude, others in the house passed time in more or less pleasant circumstances.

At noon, Xu still lay in bed. Joey's bed. After the conference in Marco's den the night before, Xu had retired with Joey. She calculated that the least of the Scardina brothers needed reassurance that she was loyal to him, even though she'd been playing seductress to Fraser. It was a bore, but a necessary one. It had been many years since Xu had learned to dismiss her thoughts and let her body and empty words do all the work in flattering and pleasing a man in bed. A honeyed mouth could hide her daggered heart. But all the same, she had claimed the privilege of a kept woman and sent Joey out while she stayed in his room in the morning.

A thick mask of cold cream adorned Xu's face, and she was subsisting on the rather good coffee prepared by the Scardinas' cook, and an array of fruits that must have been brought in specially, because they were too luscious to come from a remote Indiana grocery store in the middle of winter. Coffee was a compromise; Americans were simply unable to produce palatable tea.

Physically, Xu found it more and more necessary to resort to spa tricks to keep her looks young. She banked heavily on taking ten years off her real age. But mentally, she found she also needed the time to regroup from one stage of her strategy to the next. This was a time when it would be well to make notes, but Xu had learned the hard way that even writing in Chinese characters amidst a bunch of ignorant westerners was not perfect proof against information falling into the wrong hands. It was crucial that she got her mind back into tidy order for the days ahead.

If all went well, soon the Scardinas' target would be dead, and so would Fraser. Xu would receive her reward in the shape of a new identity in Sicily, which would be simple enough to parlay into a new life somewhere more rewarding. Not Germany or anywhere too far east in Europe. There was too much danger. But as a free agent, answering to no one, she might do well in Morocco, or elsewhere in North Africa or the Arab countries. Where ever she landed, it must be somewhere she could live and work on her own terms. The years of being beholden to men, in spite of her efforts otherwise, would be over.

When she was young, Xu had not seen the mutually beneficial seductions of the men in the film world as a cage, gilded or otherwise. She had only seen that she got nice clothes and a better car than she should have expected. But the labor camp opened her eyes to the lot of a whore in the world. Even as she suffered on her knees, Xu had sworn, perhaps melodramatically, that thereafter men would serve her. Her talents would support that vow; her ego demanded nothing less than that she learn to own men the way they seemed to believe they owned her.

Life answering to the Ministry of State Security had led Xu to situations in which she was controlled, not in control, but she had always fought to be the one who came out on top. She had grown wise. The path of violence and deception taught to her only strengthened her ability as well as her resolve. Few men had bested her.

Fraser was the only one of these men still alive. He would not be for long. He was disposable, necessarily so in the scheme of things. Xu had one more part to play tonight to ensure his complete co-operation.

Xu smoothed almond oil into her hands, fingers massaging the joints. Hands showed age the worst; she had always been careful to keep hers out of the sun. Fraser should have been learning pain under her hands, not Paolo Scardina's. Xu shuddered a little, her displeasure showing sharply on her face, mouth crinkling up. She felt a headache begin above her left eye. Deliberately, she let her face go slack again. Wrinkles would not become her.

Fraser crossed her, took away the position and security she'd built. Xu had looked forward to taking everything from him in time. Her desire was to deceive him more subtly, less of the operatic tale she'd given him in the car, giving him time to fall at his own pace, to walk with open, but blind eyes into her trap. She had imagined finding the places where he was weak and bending him. Corrupting him to her own uses.

Then the opportunity with the Scardinas had come up, and it would still be death, with dishonor, for him. Allowing herself the ripe plum of Fraser's slow defeat would be letting a man rule her destiny again.

But none of that was the cause of her headache. Xu rubbed her temples and took a deep breath. She was better than this. She could focus her mind. She could banish from it the look of transparent, guileless compassion in Fraser's eyes when he listened to her talk about the prison camp. Yes, it had been high drama for his benefit, but that didn't mean it hadn't been true. From the man's dossier, it was obvious he was no saint, but there was something with a touch of the sacred in those clear eyes as he honoured her history by listening and really hearing it.

That was no matter. It couldn't be anything to her. All the crows in the world are black. Men had only ever wanted to use her. It was no matter that this one stirred something in her she thought the years had killed. Once, she had been young. That was an excuse she no longer had. It was irresponsible to let her hunger for revenge dictate her actions; it was beyond that to admit that she felt anything else at all for him.

It was nothing. Nothing she couldn't manage. Letting herself hurt for the man was just plain foolishness. He would be dead soon, the man who made her look incomepetent and who ruined her carefully gained position in life. It wouldn't hurt her at all. It really wouldn't. Xu's hand poised to sweep the coffee cup off the bedside table in an excess of emotion, then she stilled it, turning the motion into a delicate smoothing of the covers on the bed.

-=-=-

Ray Vecchio wondered if he should feel insulted by how easy it was to escape from his room. His day had passed in utter boredom, broken only by the occasional trip to the bathroom for more water, a stealthy and silent search through his belongings to see what resources he had left, and a quick change into the darkest, warmest clothes he had with him. Really, even listening to an Inuit story or two would have been a pleasant change of pace.

Now that it was dark out, the afternoon sun dropping quickly beneath the horizon, Vecchio figured it was time to make his move.

Looking through the keyhole in his door he saw the key was still in there. This was proving to be so elementary. For once it didn't require super-Boyscout Benton Fraser to figure a way out of one bizarre trap or another. Hadn't every kid in America learned the trick of how to escape from a locked room with the key left in the door from the Hardy Boys or Nancy freaking Drew? Hell, even Frannie had used it when he locked her in Nonna's room when she was six, and he'd caught hell because she'd taken apart a coat hanger and that weird painting of the Chinese lady with the blue face to get out.

Ray dug through his suitcase until he found the vinyl covered piece of cardboard that kept the bottom rigid. He had a pen in his suit pocket. It was a moment's work to take the pen apart and take out the ink tube. Ray listened at the door but he couldn't hear anyone out there. He seriously doubted the Scardinas would waste a man outside a locked door. If he was wrong, he wasn't getting out. But if he was right, it was going to be too simple.

Ray knelt and slipped the piece of cardboard under the door. The great thing about an old farmhouse like this was all the wooden doorframes were warped with age. There was plenty of clearance between the door and the sill. With the ink tube, he pushed into the keyhole, popping the key out. Then it was child's play to pull the cardboard back under the door with the key on it and unlock the door. Ray was definitely insulted. Either that or he had even more to thank Kowalski for.

The door opened with a significant creak. Fortunately, Ray's surmise about the lack of guard directly outside his room proved to be entirely accurate. The corridor was empty. Ray felt underdressed without his gun, but after the search of his room, he'd figured that was the one thing the bad guys did think to take care of - he was unarmed, and definitely not by choice. That was high on his list of things to remedy.

There was a small version of Welsh living in Ray's brain and yelling at him to remember that he was a detective, and therefore, Vecchio, had certain trained powers of observation at his disposal. This made the fact that he had absolutely no idea where Fraser was currently being held on the farm slightly more tolerable.

Because Ray did, in fact, know where to find Kowalski. If not right now, certainly soon. The man was like clockwork. Sit with the Scardinas, get stressed out, head out onto the front porch for a cigarette. So either Ray would sneak down there and find Kowalski in situ, or he'd sneak down there and wait in the shadows to jump Kowalski. It was a win/win situation. Kowalski _would_ take him to Fraser. Ray wasn't going to give the other cop a choice.

There had to be someone looking out for frustrated Police Detectives that night. Vecchio crept through the farmhouse avoiding any encounters with the Scardinas or their men much more easily than he'd expected. He slipped onto the porch and saw the glow-worm brightness of a lit cigarette. The cigarette illuminated the planes of the face above it and Ray was certain. Mikey was Kowalski and it was time to confront him with the fact that Vecchio knew.

Kowalski turned as he heard Vecchio's footsteps. He looked startled and wary when he saw who was approaching in the moonlight.

"Stanley Raymond Kowalski." Vecchio said, quietly.

Kowalski took a drag of his cigarette and blew smoke toward Vecchio.

"Who's that?" he said.

"You. You're Kowalski. You're with the Chicago PD." Vecchio said.

Kowalski appeared to consider this. Vecchio held his ground. He knew he was right. If he was wrong, 'Mikey' would have drawn on him already.

"Suppose I am. What do you think happens now? You gonna fight me again?" Kowalski asked. He looked razor-edged dangerous, and Vecchio was caught off guard by the question. He recovered quickly. He couldn't afford to waste time or risk drawing attention to them.

"What happens now is you take me to my partner, and I get him the hell out of here." Ray sighed heavily. "And secret agent lady, too, I guess."

Kowalski snorted. "Don't worry about her. But your partner, he, well, he ain't in great shape to go anywhere. And neither are you." His eyes caught the moonlight and seemed lit with an otherworldly glow. "Yeah, I'm Kowalski, yeah, I'm on your side. And right now I'm the only one of us not in deep shit, so you're going to have to trust me to get us out."

Vecchio stepped forward and grabbed Kowalski by the collar of his sweater. "I trust myself to get my partner out. You going to take him to me, or do you want me to cause a disturbance?"

Kowalski rolled his eyes.

"You know jack shit about the situation and you're just going to march in and run the show."

"I just want to see my partner." Vecchio said coldly. He had nothing against his fellow detective, but the man was his best chance of finding Fraser, and he was being oddly uncooperative.

Something in Kowalski's expression softened a fraction.

"Fine. Your funeral." he said. "But you listen to me and we do it my way."

"Just get me to him." Vecchio said. Kowalski had said Fraser wasn't in good shape. Ray had to get to him.

Kowalski put his cigarette out and pushed the front door open and looked inside cautiously. The hall way was clear and he pulled Vecchio in behind him. He made a shushing gesture which Vecchio met with a roll of his own eyes. Like he was going to be noisy now.

Kowalski led Vecchio to the cellar stairs at the back of the house, behind the kitchen. Kowalski knew that Two-lips was supposed to be waking Fraser every half hour, so he'd have to wait until after Two-lips came and went before he took Vecchio down there. He looked around and spotted the door to the broom closet. Kowalski mimed for Vecchio to get into the closet. He was totally baffled by Vecchio's expression of bemused frustration.

While Kowalski waited for Two-lips to make his run down to the cellar, he ducked into the kitchen. Two of the drivers were chatting up the maid over bottles of beer and potato chips, but they paid him no attention. The social hierarchy worked in his favor; the drivers would never dream of bothering him outside of an emergency. Kowalski opened the door of the large fridge that held supplies for the guests and staff, and took out two candy bars and a bottle of water.

Kowalski loitered in the kitchen picking at a dish of leftovers and looking intimidating until he heard Two-lips go down and then come back up the stairs from the cellar. When the gangster had enough time to pass, Kowalski sauntered out of the kitchen and rescued Vecchio from the closet.

"C'mon." he said. "Now's your chance."

As they went down the steps that led from the cellar door, Vecchio said in an undertone, "Had to stop for a snack, huh?"

Kowalski glowered but handed Vecchio a candy bar. He knew Vecchio hadn't eaten all day. Vecchio had the grace to look embarrassed and mildly grateful as he ripped the wrapper off and started to devour the chocolate. He stopped mid-bite when he saw Fraser lying on the floor, deep shadows ringing his closed eyes, his arms cuffed behind his back and the pajama shirt pulled down. There was bruising all over his torso, and Ray thought he saw burns.

"Shit, what did they do to him?" he said to Kowalski as he rushed to Fraser's side. "Benny, Benny. Wake up."

"Keep it down." Kowalski said, joining Vecchio on his knees beside the Mountie.

"What did they do to him?" Vecchio demanded in a vehement whisper as his hands hovered over Fraser, as if he could heal his hurts.

Fraser's eyes fluttered open slowly. "Ray." he said. He felt relieved, somehow. He was so tired, and he couldn't remember if he'd known for sure that Ray was still alive. Then he saw 'Mikey' and tensed up. "There's no need... hurt Ray. No." he mumbled, eyes widening with alarm at the thought of Vecchio enduring what he'd been through.

Vecchio's hands stilled.

"No, Benny, it's okay." he said. "This is Detective Kowalski. He's undercover, too. He's here to help you." He felt like he was talking to a small child, telling him to trust the nice policeman. When, hell, he didn't know if he even trusted the nice policeman.

"Xu?" Fraser croaked. He was elated that Ray was safe, but he had an obligation to her, too.

Kowalski's lips parted in a smile that looked like an animalistic snarl. He had no love for the woman who'd landed these two in the middle of trouble.

"Don't worry about her." he said. "She sold ya out. Sorry. The whole thing was a trap from the get-go."

Fraser nodded. He looked calm and almost happy at the news. In fact, it was a great weight lifted to know that his suspicions of her were reasonable, to be able to trust his judgment instead of trying to give her every last bit of the benefit of the doubt.

Kowalski moved to help Fraser sit up a bit, then opened the bottle of water he brought from the fridge.

"Guess you're pretty thirsty, huh, buddy. Just sip it." He held the water to Fraser's mouth. Fraser drank gratefully, the cold water nectar to his parched mouth and throat.

That gesture did more to win Vecchio's trust than any protestations of honesty could have.

Vecchio held up his half-eaten, slightly melted, definitely squashed candy bar.

"Think you can try a few bites?" he said. His stomach was already revolting from eating so quickly after going hungry all day, but he wanted to get some sugar into Fraser. Fraser's eyes lit up at the sight of food and he ate greedily as Ray held the candy bar out to him.

"We need to get the cuffs off him." Vecchio said.

Kowalski didn't answer immediately. He knew what had to be done, but he was pretty sure Vecchio wouldn't be happy.

"Did you hear me?" Vecchio snapped. "We have to get the cuffs off and get him out of here."

"It's not that simple." Kowalski said.

"Why not?" Vecchio demanded.

"Paolo's got someone wakin' him up every half hour. He's in no state to walk, you can't do much as banged up as you are, and I can't carry him on my own." Kowalski said. "And even if we waited until just after Two-lips was down here with him, half an hour lead at best isn't long enough to get a good head start in bad shape, driving on back roads, with all of them coming after us."

"What are you saying?" Vecchio asked.

"You know what I'm saying." Kowalski replied, his tone defensive. "I'm tellin' you you have to sit tight and trust me. I know... I know you just want to grab the Mountie and go but -"

"You have a plan?" Fraser asked softly, his voice still hoarse.

Kowalski snorted. "Kinda. Yeah. Not much, I'm sorry, but we're in a tight spot. But I figure once we're on the road I'll be able to call my captain and get you two bailed out of this mess."

"And you?" Fraser asked.

"Gonna keep my cover from being blown as long as I can. Stay under. If we're lucky, we could get the whole lot now for kidnapping, an' if they give you the job tomorrow we'll get some of them on some kind of conspiracy to murder rap. There'll be all kinds of Federal charges for sure. But I gotta stay with them as long as possible. Make sure we can make everything stick."

"And what is my role?" Fraser asked, his voice sinking even lower.

"You gotta- aw, hell, buddy, I hate to ask-"

"You need me to stay like this." Fraser said. "Let Paolo think that he's won."

Vecchio said "No!"

"Ray." Fraser's voice was gentle. How could he ask Ray to go through with this on top of everything that had happened to them recently? How could he put Ray through more distress? But what choice did they have? This undercover officer was quite right to say that Fraser was _not_ going to be any help in getting anywhere quickly tonight. His muscles were still wracked with tremors and cramps from the ordeal of the day and he doubted he could stand long, let alone make a successful break for freedom.

"Ray, I have to do this." he said. "I'm sorry. I'm sorry that I- that you were caught up in this. But I think it's our only chance to get out safely."

"I can't." Ray said. "I can't let them hurt you more." His face was a mask of pain. "Don't ask me for that, Benny. Just don't."

There was silence. Eventually, Kowalski cleared his throat and broke the impasse. They were running out of time, Two-lips would be down to rouse Fraser again soon.

"Thing is, most of it will be psychological now. Marco needs him in okay shape so Paolo can't get any rougher. And I figure he's gotta be doing better with the mind games now he's seen you're okay, and knows what the bitch is up to."

Fraser nodded. "Ray is right, Ray." he said to Vecchio. He looked at Kowalski. "I feel - stronger. Before, I- I thought that because M-Mikey, because you didn't hurt me, I felt an affinity- I thought I was -I was on the way -any man can be broken if you apply the right -I thought soon I would do what Paolo wanted, because I couldn't stand to be -_couldn't_ -and you were _kind_, and I wanted you to like me. But you are a good man, and so I'm not -I will be able to stand it better."

Vecchio looked grim. Kowalski's face wasn't much cheerier. They both understood what Fraser was saying. It didn't take long for the human mind to be bent to want to please whoever had power over a person, when that was reinforced with deprivation and pain. Fraser had neither sleep nor food nor water, and ample negative consequences for not pleasing Paolo. They could both imagine his relief at finding his trust and liking of 'Mikey' justified and not just a symptom of losing control over his own thoughts and desires.

"We're gonna get you out of this as soon as we can, okay, buddy?" Kowalski said. This was personal now. Not that he wouldn't do anything to get an innocent victim out of a wicked setup like this, but he had to admire and like the tough Mountie.

**Author's Note: Hanson's Angel particularly wanted to hear from Xu again, and I realized I'd been neglecting her. She'll be back to cause trouble soon enough, never fear. (Xu. Not Hanson's Angel. Who I hear never causes the least bit of trouble. ;) Pronouns! Tricky!) Thank you for reading and all the kind words of encouragement I've received. Always makes me happy to know people are enjoying the ride. **


	11. Chapter 10: Threats and Promises

**Disclaimer: Still not mine.**

**Chapter 10 - Threats and Promises**

"The Mountie's got balls of steel." Kowalski commented as he tied Vecchio up again. It was tense, a tension that had been building since Vecchio and Kowalski snuck back out of the cellar and Kowalski had to restrain Vecchio from punching a hole through the farmhouse wall. Kowalski knew that changing back into his pajamas and letting himself be bound again was almost impossible for Vecchio, but the Scardinas would be suspicious if he was running around loose, so they both knew it had to be done.

"He does." Vecchio said. "You have no idea."

"He's the kinda guy I wouldn't mind having at my back." Kowalski said. "You're lucky to work with him." Good partners were hard to find.

"Yeah." Vecchio said heavily, testing the knots Kowalski had tied. They'd both agreed that the Scardinas wouldn't suspect anything if he'd managed to loosen the ropes, so Kowalski tied them with a lot of slack for Vecchio's comfort while he waited the night out.

"Listen." Vecchio said as Kowalski stood up to leave. "Xu, she's got it in for Benny. If anything happens - if you have to choose - they'd probably do me quickly, but she'd make him suffer. So you have to promise me, get him out."

Kowalski drew in a sharp intake of breath. It seemed like Vecchio wasn't the only lucky one in the partnership. He'd be happy to have either of them backing him up the way they supported each other.

"I'm gonna get you both out." he said. "I am. So shut up about that."

Vecchio sighed tiredly. "Just promise me."

"Shut up!" Kowalski snapped. "I'm not promising to leave a cop behind, even if you are a giant pain in my ass. Now, get some rest, we're gonna need to be sharp tomorrow."

With that, he stalked out of the room and locked it behind him.

Vecchio closed his eyes. He still saw the image of Fraser lying on the cellar floor, in disarray and suffering. Ray swallowed hard. Was it his fault? He'd been so angry, so very angry at Benny after Irene was killed, even before Irene was shot when Benny went off on his own investigation, refusing to be a part of the blind hunt against Zuko. Ray had been so angry, so hurt that Benny was putting his cold ideals of justice over family. Ray had been so hurt, feeling like maybe Benny didn't see him as a brother, the way he saw Benny. But Ray had _never_ wanted to see Benny punished like this. His lips moved, finding familiar words of prayer. Surely whoever was in charge up there was not vengeful like this. Would not take Ray's anger and ... punish him by punishing Benny?

-=-=-

Kowalski took his own advice about getting rest. Paolo hadn't told him what the plan was to get Fraser's total cooperation. He and Joey seemed to be bonding over tormenting the man, and were running things secretively. The best thing Kowalski could figure to do was sleep while he could. It took almost an hour for Ray's mind to shut down enough to let him fall asleep. He couldn't get the image out of his head of the sheer relief on Fraser's face when he'd realized that 'Mikey' was on his side and he wasn't succumbing to the well-recognized syndrome of traumatic bonding with his captors as a protection against the beating his psyche was taking.

Paolo was wily; what he'd done left few physical traces other than the burns, but Ray knew from reading ATF reports about raids on cult compounds that forcing a physical demonstration of obedience the way he had was an innocuous looking but swiftly effective method of coercion. It wasn't like Paolo had time to break Fraser down completely, but he'd done plenty to make him more compliant and less likely to fight back.

Ray figured that anyone in law enforcement had seen victims who defended their captors, who clung to them even after they'd been freed. It always made Ray's skin crawl. And the thing was, Fraser's relief was - well, Ray would never say anything, the Mountie needed to cling to it - but Fraser's relief was falsely placed. He had no reason to think 'Mikey' was a friend when he'd 'wanted Mikey to like him', as he'd admitted. Ray had seen a lot in his time undercover, but he'd never had to watch someone systematically broken. After this whole thing was over, he wasn't sure if he'd be able to take another undercover job easily. The cost was too high.

-=-=-

Fraser found it easier to ride out the interrupted sleep, Two-lips coming like clockwork to shake him roughly awake, knowing that he wasn't alone and that Ray would be safe. Still, the broken sleep was wearing on him and although he was shored up mentally, physically, from a purely objective standpoint, he could appreciate Paolo's skill in bringing someone to the edge of sanity.

Some time between Two-lip's visits, Fraser heard a soft footfall on the steps leading into the cellar. He opened his bleary eyes and saw Xu kneeling in front of him. She raised a finger to her lips to shush him. He noticed she had slight rope burns on her wrists. If Ray and the other Ray hadn't told him quite firmly that Xu was in on the whole scheme, that it was a setup from the start, that little detail suggesting that she, too, had been held captive, would have done a lot to make him doubt her involvement. As it was, he kept silent, hardly needing to feign exhaustion and pain as she exclaimed softly over his injuries and leaned over him to pick the locks on his handcuffs with a hair-pin. On closer inspection, he decided that expensive rouge was responsible for the appearance that she'd been bound.

"We have to get out of here!" Xu said. "I'm not sure where they're holding Vecchio, but there's no time - can you stand?"

Xu put her arms around Fraser, trying to lift him to a sitting position. He restrained himself with everything he had left from shuddering at her treacherous touch.

-=-=-

Kowalski was woken by Paolo's knock on his door. He'd expected something like this, but with Paolo being so cagey he wasn't sure exactly what was going on.

"C'mon, show time!" Paolo called through the door. "Time to catch our lovely lady trying to break the Mountie out."

Ray rose quickly and pulled on the jeans he'd been wearing before bed, and opened the door. "What's going on?" he asked, not as deferential as his role would usually require, but he figured being woken in the middle of the night was a good excuse.

"A little sideshow to get our guest right where we want him." Paolo said. "Just play along. You're a smart guy, Mikey, you'll figure it out."

Ray followed Paolo to the top of the cellar stairs. Two-lips was there, and Joey and Toe. Apparently Marco was too important to get up in the small hours of the morning. Paolo rushed down the stairs first.

"Hey!" he yelled. "What the hell? Get down here, guys!"

Toe, Joey, Two-lips and Ray followed.

"Mikey, grab our Mountie friend. She got his cuffs off. Toe, get the bitch."

Toe yanked Xu up by her wrist and held her with her arm up behind her back, his gun to her head.

Ray grabbed Fraser by the arms, helping him to his feet and standing behind him. He let the ghost of a smile touch his lips with approval as Fraser made an effort at appearing to struggle with him.

Paolo stalked around the small cellar, appearing to be very angry.

"Well, Mountie, I thought you were beginning to get the idea that you do what I say, and here you're trying to make a getaway. I guess I'll have to show you who's boss. Toe, we have Vecchio to ensure our boy's co-operation. Shoot the bitch."

"No!" Fraser cried out. Although he knew that Xu was probably at no risk, he couldn't let Paolo guess that he was onto their game. Besides, there was no honor among thieves, and it was possible that Paolo would have Xu shot if it made his point, if she was no longer useful. Fraser just couldn't be responsible for that.

"No?" Paolo sneered. "Tellin' _me_ what to do now?"

"No." Fraser let his head hang. Ray Kowalski was holding him upright. It cost him his pride not to look Paolo in the eye, but much more than his pride was at stake. "No, please don't shoot her." His voice sounded cracked and tremulous, the physical effect of his treatment, but, he thought coldly, the better to convince Paolo that he was a broken man. This was way beyond his attempted acting as a used car salesman undercover with Ray. The stakes were high enough for Fraser to be actively grateful that he didn't have to pretend very much to be at the ragged end of his rope.

"Are you ready to say 'yes' to my little proposition?" Paolo asked, triumph clear in his voice.

"Yes." Fraser croaked. "Whatever it is you want done. As long as you promise not to kill Miss Xu or Detective Vecchio."

Fraser hoped with all he was worth that Paolo was feeling arrogant. If Paolo thought about it, he'd have to realize that Fraser knew he had no intention of leaving witnesses alive after this was over. That the trap had been closed around Ray Vecchio and he openly, with no thought to disguise identities or intent, meant that Vecchio had been doomed from the start. But Paolo might well assume that a desperate man wouldn't think that through, willing to trade anything for the life of his friends. His friend and - the woman who'd tried to win him over to be the lover he was posing as - the better to tangle him up in this scheme.

Paolo laughed. It was a nasty, nasal laugh, sounding not of humor but sheer malicious pleasure in bringing another human being to heel. Fraser felt Kowalski's hands tighten around his arms, the tension in the undercover policeman radiating through him at Paolo's attitude.

"All right, Mountie." Paolo said, the laugh lingering in his voice. "You'll be briefed in the morning on exactly what you have to do to earn the lives of your pathetic friends."

Paolo reached down and picked up the cattle prod that still lay on the floor near where Fraser had been kneeling. "One more reminder of the very least that's in store for them if you dare disobey me." He pressed the metal tips of the prod into Fraser's chest and held down the switch on it for longer than he had before, until Fraser's head rolled back as his back arched involuntarily and a raw, breathless scream issued from his throat. Paolo looked completely dispassionate, but he breathed faster, and the pleasure in his voice was unmistakable as he ordered Toe to take Xu back to the room she'd been held in, and Mikey to take Fraser back to the room Fraser and Xu had shared.

"Get him cleaned up and rested up. Marco will want to leave tomorrow. Make sure he drinks something, and if you have to work him over, leave off the face." Paolo ordered. "This was fun, kids, but I'm goin' back to bed."

As soon as Paolo and the others had left, Ray got an arm around Fraser's waist.

-=-=-

"C'mon, let's get up these stairs."

Fraser wanted to co-operate, glad that he had been assigned to 'Mikey', not one of the others, but he lacked his usual co-ordination, and Ray had to more or less drag him to the room Fraser had shared with Xu.

As soon as Ray closed the door, Mikey was gone, the hard-assed bodyguard replaced by a man who couldn't stand to see Fraser hurting the way he was.

"Okay, buddy. You're okay now." Ray said anxiously. "Bath first, you gotta want to clean up, loosen those muscles up. You look like you went three rounds with Tyson, huh?" And that wasn't mentioning the smell. Ray was sure Fraser would be more comfortable as soon as he was clean.

"Perhaps Ali." Fraser managed a lame joke. "A bath would be most welcome." He didn't think he could stand long enough to shower, and Kowalski apparently realized it.

Ray watched Fraser critically as he hobbled toward the bathroom. He was moving like a wounded animal, all drawn in defensively on himself, but to the extent that he could, he held his shoulders back and his head up. Ray suspected that Fraser would want as little assistance as possible.

Fraser was stymied upon reaching the tub. His muscles were so stiff from being held in one position all day after a night standing up cuffed to the pillar, that he couldn't bend the right way to run himself a bath. In fact, he wasn't sure that he was going to be able to get in and out without assistance. But the hot water would feel so good. Before he could muster a request for help, Kowalski was in the bathroom, matter-of-factly turning the faucets and keeping up a line of running commentary.

"There we go, nice and hot. Hmm. Geez, the Scardinas go all out with this stuff. Bubble bath? Hah, can't hardly see Marco in a bubble bath, can ya? What do you want? There's uh... you don't seem like a peach guy." Ray leaned down and tested the water and adjusted to add a little more cold. "Citrus eucalypt, that kinda sounds more like a man's bubble bath. Surprised they don't have port an' cigar scented or something, huh?"

"The citrus and eucalypt would be pleasant." Fraser said, when Ray paused for breath.

"Gotcha." Ray said, and poured a generous splash in. He intended to help Fraser in and out of the bath and figured the man might be less embarrassed under the cover of foam.

"Anything major hurt?" Ray asked as Fraser slowly stripped out of the pajama pants. Ray made a note to bag those up to toss out later.

"No, just a little stiff and sore, thank you." Fraser said.

Ray held out his hand to support Fraser as he lowered himsef into the tub. 'A little stiff and sore' was definitely an understatement.

"Gonna be tough tomorrow." Ray said. "You going to be up for it?"

Unasked were all the questions that plagued him about Fraser's emotional, rather than physical state. Physically, the man was hurt and tired, half-starved and dehydrated now, but should recover quickly. Paolo intended him to have sleep and water, and to hell with the rest, but Ray intended to make sure that he ate and got the minimal first aid Ray could provide at least. But emotionally? It was anybody's guess.

"I think so." Fraser said. "Yes. You were right, earlier. I needed to see Detective Vecchio. And I needed to know how things stood with Miss Xu."

Ray shook his head. "That woman-"

Fraser spoke distantly, as if he wasn't aware of Kowalski's presence any more. The warmth of the water was soaking in to his aching body, and the refreshing scent of the bubble bath was lifting his headache. "She hurt me once before. But she asked me to give her a second chance. I couldn't refuse. Even now, I don't regret putting my faith in her. I can't - I can't believe that there is no room for redemption in this world."

Ray couldn't imagine giving his trust to someone who'd hurt him. 'Fool me once, shame on you -fool me twice, shame on me', he thought. Fraser was like some kind of paladin, white knight, if he felt he had owed Xu anything. Ray felt confused, sort of humbled, sort of incredulous, that Fraser would go out of his way to help someone who hurt him, and still try to believe that other people deserved a second chance after he'd been burned like this.

"Don't you worry about her now." Ray said. "She's not getting a third chance to hurt you while I'm around."

Ray smiled sardonically to himself as he noted the protective overdrive in his words and tone. 'Oh yeah, Kowalski, there's only one wannabe white-knight in this bathroom... and any minute now I'm gonna look out the window and see a bunch of pigs flyin' by.' He couldn't say what it was about the Mountie that aroused such a strong protective instinct in him. Fraser's obvious loyalty to his partner, Vecchio? His strength under pressure? Maybe the fact that he seemed to be looking out for everyone else even while he was being tortured, without asking who was looking out for him.

Recovering from his lapse into sentimentality, Kowalski said, "You look pretty cozy now, huh? Just don't drown on me, I got a couple things to take care of."

"Understood." Fraser mumbled, his eyes closed and his whole being relaxing in the comfort of the bath.

Once Kowalski got Fraser settled into the bathtub, he went out into the hallway to call for Two-lips.

"Listen, if I gotta babysit this schmoe, you better get me some food, I guess breakfast or somethin'." he said. "Get me some soda from the kitchen an' get the cook up. I want, aww, hell, I guess that soup we had last night was pretty good. And get me some vodka, and some kinda soda to mix with it, a'right?"

Two-lips stared. "You the boss of me now?" he complained. "Why should I go running your errands?"

"Because I gotta watch boy wonder, make sure he doesn't think he can get away." Ray snarled. "You wanna fuck with me right now? You wanna make Paolo mad? Just do it."

Two-lips shrank back, apparently not willing to meet 'Mikey's' challenge.

"Whaddeva. You're still not the boss of me." he grumbled. But all the same, he went to the kitchen.

With the closed bathroom door between him and the rest of the world, the effects of the last couple of days caught up with Fraser. He knew that what he was feeling was mostly due to lack of sleep. But understanding the source of the uncontrollable shaking, and being able to do anything about it were two different things. Without sleep, things took on a distant and unreal aspect, and Fraser suffered a momentary sense of terror that perhaps he hadn't escaped the cellar. Perhaps this was all in his mind as he struggled to stay strong. He clenched his hand on the slippery porcelain, trying to anchor himself in the room. This was real. This warmth and safety, however temporary, was real.

In the end, it was the sound of Kowalski puttering about in the other room that kept Fraser from losing it. The undercover detective was so definite, so alive, thrumming with purpose and a solidity of presence belied by the way he seemed to be constantly in motion. _He_ was no figment of Fraser's imagination. Fraser dragged his scattershot concentration back to the purpose of getting clean and letting the eucalypt-scented water drain away some of the tension in his back and shoulders.

By the time Fraser emerged from the en suite bathroom in boxer shorts, trying, with fumbling fingers, to button one of the shirts that Dolenz had provided in his luggage, Ray had a tray set on the bed with soup, crackers, ginger ale, a glass and a bottle of Stolichnaya vodka.

Kowalski looked up, pleased that Fraser had limbered up enough to get himself out of the bath tub. "Don't bother doing your shirt up." Ray said. "I gotta clean up your back. You- there are burns- they didn't exactly give me a first aid kit."

"Oh." Fraser said.

He took off the shirt and perched gingerly on the edge of the bed. He could feel himself shivering, not with cold, and he hoped that Detective Kowalski would let him sleep soon.

"Okay, this is gonna hurt, sorry." Ray said briskly. He fetched a towel from the bathroom and opened the bottle of vodka.

"Maybe you should have a slug of this before I get started." he said.

"Thank you, but I don't drink." Fraser replied.

"Might wanna make an exception. No? Okay... uh... I'm really sorry, buddy, but I gotta do this. Just hang in there."

Ray tried to be as gentle as he could, but to Fraser, it still felt like his back was on fire as Ray cleaned his burns with the vodka and the towel. He squeezed his eyes shut and clenched his teeth until he thought his jaw would break.

Swiping alcohol over the blistered areas on Fraser's back, Ray noticed the bullet scar the Mountie bore. It looked recent - a matter of months in the past, not years. He was tempted to ask the story, maybe distract Fraser from the current pain, but the man under his hands was in no shape to be talking for long.

When Ray was done with Fraser's back, he moved on to Fraser's chest, and had the singular displeasure of watching Fraser hold back tears while he cleaned the wounds there.

"All done." Ray said finally. "Sorry. I'm gonna have to tear up one of your shirts to bandage you. I don't want you gettin' an infection on top of everything."

Fraser merely nodded. He was tired and sore beyond words. He would have been more comfortable if he could see Ray Vecchio, but for some reason he found it easy to trust this other Ray, to allow Kowalski to care for him while he couldn't care for himself.

Kowalski coaxed Fraser to drink the soda and some of the soup before tucking him into bed. He felt absurdly as if he were tending a child. Ray hoped that by the time Fraser was expected to be functional, rest and fluids would have restored some vitality to the obviously drained man.

There was enough vodka to take the edge off the riot of angry emotions the night had left Kowalski with, as he watched Fraser sleep in a rigid position on his side, his face pale and shadowed with the torments he'd endured.

**Author's Note: You've all been so awesome with the feedback and encouragement that I thought I'd try to get this up a little sooner. **


	12. Chapter 11: Target

**Disclaimer: I should spend more time with my original characters and situations. These are not they. I make no claims to ownership and mean no affront to copyrights.**

**Chapter 11 - Target  
**

The bed was warm and comfortable, and Fraser stretched out langorously in the space between waking and sleep, aware only that his limbs were free to move where he wanted. He stirred slowly as he heard Kowalski at the door, speaking to Paolo's driver. Fraser tensed momentarily at some of the words spoken, but then remembered the importance of Kowalski maintaining the appearance of being Mikey, who was not concerned with the well-being of a certain Mountie.

"Paolo wants him to see Marco in a half hour, okay?" the driver informed Kowalski.

"Yeah, got it." Ray said.

"The boss said to bring you breakfast. You want everything."

"Sure." Ray answered. "Extra bacon. Extra toast. Lots of coffee. Bring me some juice."

"What about the other guy?"

"Well, did the boss say feed him?" Ray asked snidely.

"Nah. Just bring you breakfast and get him downstairs."

"So he don't need feeding." Ray said. "Now hurry your ass up."

The driver took being ordered around more readily than Two-Lips had.

Ray closed the door and turned to the bed where Fraser was pushing himself up into a sitting position.

"Hey, how're you feeling?" Ray asked, his tone switching immediately from harsh dominance to careful consideration.

"Ungh. Much better, thank you." Fraser said. His voice still sounded hoarse, but stronger than it had been previously.

"Paolo wants you downstairs soon. You okay to get dressed now?"

"Certainly." Fraser said. "I am a little stiff, still, but I think I can manage that." There was a mild humor to his voice, and Ray noticed that the quiet dignity that he wore like a mantle had been restored to him, the spark in his eye that told the wise observer that Fraser was a force to be reckoned with.

"You'll have to try to look a bit less good for Paolo, you know." Ray observed. "Uh. You know what I mean."

Fraser slipped out of bed on the side closest to the closet full of the clothes that Dolenz had selected for his undercover role.

"Perfectly clear." Fraser said, halting himself before he accidentally addressed Ray as "Detective Kowalski", which would be a bad habit to fall into, as impolite as it felt to omit the honorific.

Fraser was dressed in slacks and a polo shirt, this time with a deep blue sweater over the whole ensemble, by the time Ray's breakfast arrived. Fraser inspected himself in the bathroom mirror and silently agreed with Ray that after a few uninterrupted hours of sleep he would have to put in quite an effort to look less human. He'd even managed to shave, although it was a slow effort, his hands shaking at the pain radiating from his arms and shoulders. As it stood he was far too presentable. Fraser sighed, heart heavy at the continued need for deception.

There was a knock at the door and Paolo's driver brought in a tray with a laden plate of breakfast, coffee and juice on it.

The smell of breakfast was ambrosial. Fraser's stomach grumbled loudly, reminding him that he hadn't eaten in over a day. But he resigned himself to waiting.

Ray set the tray down on the desk in the corner of the room. When Fraser emerged from the bathroom, Ray gestured to the desk with a flourish. "Breakfast is served, m'lord." he said, with a crooked grin.

"But-"

"But nothin'. I got no appetite this time of the morning. Wish I could get out for a smoke, and I hope you don't mind sharin' the coffee cup, but the food and the juice are all yours. Just eat real slow, don't want to mess your stomach up."

Fraser crossed the room quickly, trying not to appear rude. Extra toast. Extra bacon. The cook's excellent fluffy scrambled eggs. Fresh orange juice to soothe his throat. It was incredible how grateful he could feel for the small things after even a short period of forced deprivation.

"Thank you, I-"

"De nada." Ray said, waving his hand. "I mean it about the coffee, though."

It was a pleasure for Ray to watch Fraser's vigor restored, the man coming back to himself so quickly after his ordeal. On his own account, Fraser was basking in the easily given warmth of friendship extended by Ray. It was not something he was accustomed to, something he'd had little enough of before he met the other Ray, Vecchio, the man who'd brought Fraser into his family without a second thought.

-=-=-

Breakfast consumed, Fraser stood.

"I believe I am expected downstairs shortly." he said.

Ray snorted slightly with wry laughter. "You're like that South Pole guy. 'I may be some time.' Yeah, right."

"Captain Oates." Fraser replied. "Well, there's no point fussing. Shall we?"

By the door, Ray stopped and put one hand on Fraser's arm.

"You understand, I can't be nice to ya out there. Mikey-, well, Mikey wouldn't like you. Don't take it personal."

"I understand." Fraser said. "I just hope I don't let you down."

Ray looked Fraser in the eye, giving him a keen examination. If Fraser couldn't keep selling his line of bull, then Fraser and Vecchio were in deep shit, and Kowalski was sure he was close behind.

"You'll be fine." he said finally, his tone confident. "Let's get to it."

On the walk down stairs, Fraser composed himself, or rather, discomposed himself. Underneath his calm front, so readily restored by Ray Kowalski's kind care, there was still an animal part of his brain that shuddered and wanted to run screaming from the men who had repeatedly hurt him, who had put him to torture.

All he had to do, the one simple thing he had to do, was to counteract all of the lessons in courageous endurance, in steel-spined rigidity that his father and grandmother had instilled in him. All he had to do was to go against every instinct that told him to hide the pain and weakness, and let enough of it show through to fool Paolo Scardina that he was, above all things, a man battered and broken by fear.

If he could be strong enough not to flinch, could he be strong enough to bend his head and shy away when the occasion called for it?

"In here, Mikey." Paolo called out as they passed the doorway to Marco Scardina's den. Ray gave Fraser a shove that looked a lot firmer than it was.

"Get in there." he snapped.

Fraser allowed himself a brief glance around the room and tried desperately not to color up at the lewd Victorian paintings. It was more important to know who was in the room, and where, in case anything went wrong and it came to trying to fight it out. Not that he stood much chance in the shape he was in.

Marco was present, sitting to one side in his large, comfortable chair. Paolo sat facing the door, and behind him were Toe and Two-Lips. Joey leaned against a bookcase looking sullen.

Fraser made a mental note of that. Obviously Xu's association with Joey had been her easiest way in to the operation, but Paolo was running the show. Paolo had been in charge in the cellar, and here, Marco was allowing him to present whatever orders they had for Fraser. Fraser dropped his gaze before anyone in the room had reason to notice its boldness.

"Sit our boy down over here." Paolo said to Ray, and Fraser felt Ray's hand on his back, a careful touch that nonetheless made him wince, guiding him toward a chair beside Paolo.

"So, Constable, you might be interested to know who you're gonna do for us." Paolo said. His voice was heavy with a false camaraderie that set Fraser's teeth on edge.

Fraser didn't answer, and Paolo snapped his fingers. Fraser wondered briefly if he was to be punished for not cooperating fully, but Two-lips just went over to Marco Scardina's desk and brought a manila folder back to Paolo. He glowered at Fraser as he handed it over. Paolo opened the folder and passed it to Fraser.

At first, he didn't recognize the man in the glossy black and white headshot. It wasn't the sort of high profile political target Dolenz had hinted at. Then a memory from a news report clicked in his head, and Fraser felt a jolt of fear. He knew who this man was, and if Xu had been feeding Dolenz false information, even if Dolenz was keeping an open mind about possible targets, Fraser feared that there was simply no way that he'd suspect the Scardinas would go so hard after this particular man. It was all on him and Ray, and Detective Kowalski, to make sure the hit wasn't made.

"Richard Rowland." he finally said in a low voice.

"Yeah. That's him." Paolo confirmed.

Richard Rowland was not an obvious target for an organized crime family. But Fraser realized, as he gripped the folder and stared at the photo, it made perfect sense. Rowland was a high level bureaucrat, one of the faceless many who made the rule of law work in Fraser's great nation. Rowland was currently heading the public service section of the Canadian delegation to the G7's Financial Action Task Force. The FATF sounded like another dull acronym, but Fraser understood with a certainty that it was much more than that to the Scardinas.

World wide, it was the body dedicated to investigating and shutting down companies that existed to launder money for organized crime. Canada had - under Rowland's guiding hand - contributed greatly to the effort. Fraser wouldn't wonder that the Scardinas had been directly effected by his work.

"Why?" Fraser dared ask.

"He screwed up some major deals for us last year. He screwed over a couple of other families. A family with whom we have not always been friendly made an attempt to take him out. Not too smart. They blew it. He's been protected since then."

"If you take him out it will improve your family's status, and perhaps shame the other family." Fraser posited.

"Bright boy." Paolo said approvingly. "You got it. Plus, we owe him for getting up in our business. Now, since other parties made a mess of things, Rowland's been guarded by your people. Mounties. Doesn't take the same route to work, rides in a bullet proof car, meaning another shot with a sniper is right out. But we got it figured as to how you can get Rowland where he works."

Paolo's face turned into sharp angles as he told Fraser the simple plan. It relied heavily on Fraser's status as a Mountie, and Fraser came quickly to see that they could not have merely hired someone suitable for the job. The coercion was a necessary part of the whole sordid scheme. Only an idiot would think that he could walk in the way that the Scardinas had things planned and leave the building alive after assassinating the target. Once shots were fired, he'd have Rowland's protection detail shooting first and leaving nothing to ask questions of.

"You expect me to be able to walk in and approach Mr. Rowland without being stopped or apprehended?" Fraser asked.

"Sure." Paolo said. "No problem. You'll be in uniform, you got the right ID, you can even carry without anyone thinkin' nothin' of it. That gets you into the building. There wasn't damn guard in the building we could buy, but we got enough blackmail material on one of 'em that we know what office Rowland is in and how to get to it. We know Rowland works late. We'll arrive in Toronto late afternoon, let the building empty some, then you go in, shoot the guard outside Rowland's office, do Rowland, get out. We make a diversion for the last part, but you got a silencer, so you got nothin' to worry about, except what happens to your friends if you fuck up."

Fraser bit his lower lip thoughtfully. The plan as it had been outlined involved Paolo and 'Mikey' driving with him to Toronto, where Rowland was working out of a Government building, while everyone else stayed in Indiana. That wouldn't do.

"All right." Fraser said, nodding slowly. "But I want- I need Detective Vecchio and Miss Xu to come with me. I can't leave them behind. I need time to- to be with them."

Paolo darted a glance at Marco. Fraser was in no position to negotiate, but keeping him cooperative without further violence was in their interest. Marco nodded his approval.

"Sure, they go with you, far as the border. We don't want a fuss there."

"And afterwards? How can you let them walk away?" Fraser asked. He hated to ask it, he knew the reality was that the mafia family would never let witnesses go. He had to walk a fine balance between gullibility induced by pain and fear and a level of stupidity of which the Scardinas would not believe him capable.

Paolo grinned, a horrible sight, full of malice. "Don't worry 'bout that, Constable. We'll have you to ensure that when we let them go, they won't bother runnin' to no-one."

Fraser relaxed slightly. He really wouldn't have been able to feign credulity if Paolo had pretended that the Scardinas would release him, too. He was still unsure if he'd established to Paolo that he had no choice but to do what he was told. Fraser worried that the hope for escape planted in him by Kowalski's assurances was making him appear more nonchalant about the situation than he should.

"Why should I trust you?" Fraser pushed one more time.

Paolo's hand shot out, grabbing Fraser by the chin and forcing him to look into Paolo's eyes.

"You don't got a choice." Paolo said. He seemed to be searching Fraser's face, looking for something.

Fraser's instinct was to pull away, but he quashed it, forcing himself to withstand the odious touch of the man who'd tortured him. At first his eyes blazed resistance. Then he remembered what hinged on his surrender, and deliberately let go of the iron control he had mustered. Something wrenched inside him as he let the walls down and let this stranger, this enemy see what was in him. Panic. Shame. So much shame at how weak he felt. An almost primal urge to run, to flee, or freeze like an animal caught in oncoming headlights. That was what the deliberate conditioning in the cellar had brought him to.

And under it all, pure terror. That this time he'd dragged Ray into something he couldn't get them out of. This time it would be too much, and Ray would die because Fraser had asked for his help. And the deepest terror of all - that even if they made it out alive, it would be one time too many, one last time Fraser had trusted wrongly and Ray had suffered, and Ray would walk away from their friendship and leave it broken on the ground.

Paolo showed his shark teeth again, satisfied that he saw a man bent to his will. Marco stood, his own face a mask of piscine satisfaction. "Good job, Paoly-boy. He'll do. Now get moving. We got a point to make."

-=-=-

Joey slouched into his bedroom, looking sulky. He didn't like that Paolo was stealing all the glory on this one. It'd been his idea. Well, his and Xu's. Speaking of, the lady had one last job to do and needed to get her fine ass out of bed.

"Hey, babe." Joey said.

"Mmm?" Xu looked up at him, kittenish.

"You gotta get up an' get back into the clothes you were wearin' last night. You're goin' on a trip."

Xu pulled herself up into a sitting position, letting the covers drape about her artistically.

"Oh?" she said. "I thought we weren't going to Toronto?" She had no wish to be seen by border officials.

"We aren't." Joey looked thunderous. "I got cut outta the deal, of course. I get no respect around here. But you gotta make nice with lover-boy for the trip. Paolo let him set conditions on doin' the job, and you and the cop going with is the condition. If it'd been me, I'da told him he was just doin' it or he'd see what he got."

"Of course, darling, I wish they'd let you handle it." Xu said. She got out of bed and stretched, aware that her figure was really _very_ good for her age, especially with the light from the window behind her making a silhouette and hiding any detested wrinkles.

She reminded herself that she wouldn't be playing up to this dolt for much longer. Just long enough to get to the continent and make her own way. In the meantime, he was easily flattered. And easily distracted.

Xu pouted, a little moue. "I guess I'd better get ready to leave. I was hoping to spend the morning in a much more pleasant way."

Joey grinned, getting a swagger back in his step as he crossed the room to take Xu's face in both hands and kiss her thoroughly.

Really, Xu thought, her mind otherwise occupied while Joey practiced his oral maneuvers, as boring as the car ride would be, and even with the danger if she had to cross the border, she would much rather spend the morning making one last assault on Benton Fraser's impenetrable defenses than having the slightly pathetic Joey Scardina's tongue down her throat. This could not be over too soon. Soon, Richard Rowland would be dead, and she'd be paid off and living a new life.

And Benton Fraser would be dead too, either at the hands of the RCMP officers detailed to protect Rowland, or at the hands of the Scardinas. His name would be ruined, forever associated with the cowardly murder of a good man. Xu pushed Joey away gently, with the excuse that she had to hurry and get dressed. Why didn't revenge taste any sweeter than Joey's tobacco-tainted breath?

**Author's Note: Ugh. The Bruins played brutally badly tonight, so I almost didn't update because I was too busy cussing and despairing. And I wouldn't even watch hockey if I hadn't seen The Blue Line a zillion times. So blame Due South for me almost not updating tonight. But as I do want to share this story with you, and you're all so great about reading and reviewing, here it is! (I was going to call this chapter "****Captain Oates Is Not a New Breakfast Cereal", but you know... good taste dictates otherwise.)  
**


	13. Chapter 12: Reversal

**Disclaimer: I asked for an idealistic Mountie and two world-weary Chicago cops for my birthday, and all I got was this lousy 4-0 Bruins shut-out. **

**Chapter 12 - Reversal**

"Well if this isn't the damn craziest road trip I've been on."

Ray Vecchio's voice was heavy with sarcasm. Fraser definitely preferred that to the sullen silence that had earlier prevailed in the large vehicle carrying him, Ray and Xu, in addition to the unpleasant Toe and Marco's personal driver.

Ray's mood seemed to be improving since the driver had pulled into a Dairy Queen drive through on the outskirts of South Bend, and at Fraser's almost pleading insistence and Xu's flat out heavy-handed flirtation, bought donuts and coffee for everyone in the car. By the time Xu was done, Toe and Marco's driver were well on the way to thinking that feeding the prisoners to keep them quiet was their own great idea.

Fraser had to admit that Ray's observation had merit. Except for the whole threat of torture and death part, this did have the feel of a road trip, as the miles of Michigan farmland reeled past like movie scenery. He was almost interested to note the changing landscape as Indiana's preponderance of stubbled cornfields gave way to dairy land, with huge barns looming and herds of white and black splotched holsteins or caramel colored jersey cows clustered together breathing foggy air out into the cold. Any other day, Fraser would certainly have brought the herd of less common brown swiss cows to Ray's (probably exasperated) attention.

The scenery might have been pretty, but the winter weather had left the roads rutted, frost heaves wreaking their customary havoc on the black top. Fraser felt each jolt, in spite of the SUV's miraculously good suspension. He felt some grim satisfaction that the Scardina entourage would be suffering from at least a small measure of the discomfort he was in.

Fraser couldn't find much to say, and he was relieved that Xu was not trying to be chatty. He was uncomfortable enough having her sit between him and Ray, but he could hardly make a fuss without revealing that he knew she had betrayed him. As for Ray, he continued an occasional monologue about the barrenness of the countryside. An hour into the journey, the SUV passed a sign for Benton Harbor, and Ray pointed it out.

"Guess you're famous." he teased.

Fraser jerked his head up. "It would seem so." he said. He appreciated Ray's attempt to keep their spirits high, in his own, sharp-tongued fashion. The detective seemed to be remarkably resilient given his own ordeal of hunger and thirst, and some nasty bruises from the first night's attentions. He was being admirably level headed about the situation. It was hard for Fraser to be optimistic when Detective Kowalski was traveling in another car with Paolo and Paolo's driver. Fraser wasn't at all sure how their escape could be managed. But he owed it to Ray Vecchio to pay more attention to their surroundings and not allow his morale to sink so low that he failed to take any opportunity that presented itself.

-=-=-

Kowalski wasn't thrilled to be split up from the men he was trying to keep alive, but the logic of it worked out that way. He was Paolo's man, he was riding with Paolo. Marco had no reason to trail up to Toronto, and Marco trusted his driver and Toe to keep the three prisoners in line. Or, technically, the two prisoners and the treacherous turncoat woman. Said treacherous woman was the current topic of Paolo's musings.

"Say, when we get done in Canada, I bet Joey'd share that sweet piece of ass with me. Whaddaya think, Mikey? I heard Oriental chicks will do anythin'."

"She ain't my type." Ray grunted. His type, hell, he wouldn't screw her with Paolo's dick. Nor did he enjoy the locker room talk. It just made him feel dirty. He'd never talk that way about Stella, even if everything between them was so messed up now. And growing up Polack, he sure didn't need the free racist commentary Paolo was throwing in to the mix.

Paolo made a crude gesture with his hands. "Sure, she don't got a lot fillin' out her blouse, but still, she looks like a hot ride. Joey did good for once." This last was grudging, and Ray knew Paolo wouldn't have admitted it if Joey had done well enough to be included in the actual operation, rather than being stuck back at the farmhouse with Marco.

"Got your passport ready?" Paolo asked, not stopping to hear the answer. "We'll be at the border in a couple hours. The Mountie is with us from there and Toe takes the cop for a ride. Nice that there's some kinda big body of water right by to get rid of him in, huh?" Paolo said with a genuine laugh.

Ray stiffened slightly, his long fingers tapping on his knee. The route they were taking would put them right on Lake Huron just as they hit the Canadian border. There were bound to be secluded parks where it'd be all too easy for Toe to dispose of Ray Vecchio's body. Kowalski hadn't expected that Paolo would be so expedient in having Detective Vecchio eliminated. That made it even more urgent for Ray to do something. Something, in all probability, a lot more drastic than sneaking off to a payphone to call in the cavalry.

"Yeah, real handy." Ray let teeth show. Mikey's habitual grin was close enough to a snarl not to require particular efforts toward civility from him.

Drastic. Ray pondered as a mile passed without another word from Paolo. Hell, he was going to have to blow his cover. Ray felt a sudden elation at that realization and had to fight to keep an unseemly grin from bursting out on his face. No more kowtowing to Paolo and Marco. No more pretending to be a slack-jawed neanderthal to keep his cover. No more sneaking out to a particular Chicago dive to make contact with his captain, at risk of discovery every time. He could go back and try to fix things up with Stella, one more time.

"Somethin' the matter, Mikey?" Paolo asked. "Y'look kinda gassy there."

"Nah." Ray replied, ruthlessly supressing his nervous excitement. "Just all this countryside. I leave the city, I come down with a skin condition."

"Yeah, I know what you mean." Paolo agreed. "We'll be back in Chi-town soon enough. I got this girl at this massage place, little Filipina piece, she'll make you forget you ever left, know what I mean?" Paolo grinned lecherously.

Yes, Ray decided, he was well and truly ready to blow his cover sky high.

-=-=-

Although the SUV was large, Fraser still felt cramped up in the back seat. His shoulders and neck were tight and sore. Xu seemed to pick up on this, and she leaned over, putting her hand on his shoulder, soothing it down over his collar bone.

"You look stiff. I could help." she said.

Fraser stiffened further, but Ray was the one who objected verbally.

"Listen, lady, you have no right or reason to put your hands on Benny. So get them off."

"Maybe Ben likes my hands here." Xu said.

"He doesn't. So keep them to yourself." Ray retorted sharply.

"I'm sure he can speak for himself." Xu said, her hand still wandering.

Fraser opened his mouth to do so, unsure of quite what he'd say, but found himself forestalled.

"Sure, but I'm speaking for him. Hands off. You might think I'm a good Italian boy, wouldn't hit a lady, but I'm also a Chicago cop and I have two words for you: Police Brutality."

Ray was smiling coldly now, his eyes gleaming. After what Xu's machinations had put Fraser through, Ray would love one single excuse to lay into her.

Sadly for Ray's ambitious dream of introducing Xu's face to his knuckles, Toe picked this moment to turn around and yell.

"Keep your hands where I can see 'em, youse all, and shut up and no threatening to hit anyone." He turned back to face the road, crossing his arms in a posture of irritation.

Ray heard Fraser make a small sound, which at first he took for a moan of fear, but when he turned to look, it appeared that, against all the odds, Fraser was repressing a snort of laughter.

"What?" Ray whispered.

"It's just..." Fraser whispered low, leaning forward to talk around Xu, who was mirroring Toe's posture of crossed-arm frustration, "I'm afraid that our captor reminded me rather singularly of my grandmother on the rare occasion that I had company as a child when traveling. I'm sorry, Ray, I may be somewhat more susceptible to hysterics than is my usual wont. Oh dear."

The 'Oh dear.' was prompted by Toe turning back around, this time yelling, "AND NO WHISPERIN'!"

In spite of the general gravity of the situation, and, for instance, the ability of Toe to back up his threats with firearms, Ray found that he had to bite his tongue to keep from laughing, too. There was only so much pressure one could be under without needing to vent some of it, and Fraser's observation had definitely caught Ray off guard. Xu looked extraordinarily put out.

Spirits lightened by the brief moment of camaraderie with Ray, a very necessary tonic against the creeping sensation of losing himself that Fraser had been battling since the beginning of the undercover assignment, Fraser finally turned his attention to the landscape passing outside the SUV's window. By his reckoning they'd been driving east-north-east since Ray's comment about Benton Harbor. The highway skirted most of the towns on the way. The next large town would be Kalamazoo. Without any great strategizing, Fraser ventured a guess that it would be where Kowalski might have a chance to get out of the car long enough to make a surreptitious phone call. It was frustrating to rely on an unknown person to save the day rather than leaping into action, and Fraser ran various contingency plans through his head as the landscape scrolled past, inexorably bleak.

-=-=-

It was at a gas station where the highway intersected another road, past which Fraser noticed the landscape was dotted with small frozen lakes, that Paolo's car pulled in, and Marco's driver followed with the SUV.

Marco's driver got out to pump gas, and when he got back in he told Toe, "Right, Paolo says we're pulling in here to use the can, and I guess Mikey wants smokes." He pulled the car around to a very small parking area beside the gas station. Paolo's driver parked next to him.

Ray Kowalski got out of Paolo's car and ambled over. "Hey, if you need to take a leak, I'll watch these guys." he said. He was aiming for casual, he was really shooting for totally and completely indifferent.

Kowalski waited until he could see that Paolo and his driver had gone into the station before he added, to Toe, "Oh, yeah, an' I think the boss wanted a chat with you. You been bad?"

Kowalski knew that Toe was still resentful about being lied to about Vecchio and Fraser being undercover, and his smirking taunt was designed to ruffle the big bodyguard enough to make him act without thinking too hard.

Toe grunted and got out of the car. "Fine, I'll see what he wants. You wait here, you can piss after I'm done." This last was addressed to the driver, and Kowalski cursed mentally. That meant he still had one man left to deal with. He paused again until Toe was inside the gas station. This really was flying by the seat of his pants, a crazy half-formed plan born of desperation. The funny thing was, he felt more alive than he had the whole time he'd been undercover as Mikey. Sure, it was a big risk to take, trying to snatch Vecchio and Fraser out from under heavily armed captivity, but the energy and rhythm that he relied on to get him through tight squeezes was racing through him at the pace of his accelerated heart rate. Now was the moment of truth. One last guy to get out of the way. He had to time this right so Paolo and his driver didn't get back before Ray made a clean getaway, taking the other cop and the Mountie with him.

Taking a last cleansing breath, nerves firing with the awareness that Toe or Paolo could come back at any time, Kowalski wandered around to look speculatively at the front driver's side tire of Marco's SUV.

"Man, you're gettin' a flat here." Kowalski said, injecting a small amount of malicious glee into his statement.

"Shit." Marco's driver said. He slid out of the car and came around to look. With no hesitation, Kowalski smacked him over the back of his head with the MP5, and climbed in to take his place.

"Ready for a joyride?" he said with a grin.

Fraser and Ray Vecchio caught on fast enough to restrain Xu, Vecchio clamping a hand over her mouth before she could alert anyone to what was going on.

Kowalski tore out of the gas station parking lot, heading west. Oh yeah, he felt alive, behind the wheel. Like Steve McQueen, and sure, the SUV wasn't exactly a '68 Mustang Fastback, but he'd still coax some sugar out of it.

"Chicago or bust!" Kowalski said, slapping the steering wheel.

Paolo, Toe, and Paolo's driver came running out of the gas station. Ray floored the SUV, looking maniacally cheerful at the speed that he was getting out of the great beast of a vehicle. When he was sure he was well on the road, he reached into his jacket for his backup gun, a neat little 9mm with which he was very comfortable, and leaned over to hand it to Vecchio.

"Keep the lady in check, all right? We got no time for screwing around. You two okay?"

"I believe we're well." Fraser said.

Vecchio took the gun. "We're doing better now. Can't I just push her out the door? It'd be fair." Xu was responsible for his own dive from a moving vehicle the last time they met.

"If it was up to me..." Kowalski said.

Paolo's car was not far behind them, and Kowalski turned his attention to outdriving Paolo's driver. It was at least five minutes before Vecchio piped up with "Are we there yet?"

"Why the hell did I give you the gun?" Kowalski asked, but his voice was cheerful. He really was out from under, he didn't care how much shit he'd get handed for blowing his cover so precipitously, and the good guys had a fighting chance at making it free and clear. He just had to keep the unwieldy SUV upright and moving forward until they hit civilization and he could get help.

Kowalski watched the road, Vecchio watched Xu, keeping the 9mm trained on the desperate ex-spy turned criminal, and Fraser made out like going over the broken up highway wasn't causing his back to flare up with numerous complaints of cruel and unusual treatment. He closed his eyes briefly and pushed the pain away.

Xu kept her eyes fixed on Vecchio's gun, but he gave her no chance to act. Her mind was divided between this task and trying to filter through everything that had happened, to understand just when Fraser had found out she had betrayed him. The majority of her reason leaned toward this morning, _after_ he had begged Paolo for her life in the cellar. But a treacherous minority vote argued that he might have known, he might have known full well what she was, and still stood between her and harm. Her plans were in disarray again, and if he really was that stupidly loyal, she could use that. Xu's forehead wrinkled as the treacherous minority vote pointed out that that was not it at all, that was not why she wanted to believe in Fraser.

"Grim out here." Kowalski said, gesturing at the wintry landscape after the silence had drawn out long and pregnant with worries. "Makes you want the city."

"I find the winter landscape not without austere beauty." Fraser said, grasping eagerly at the distraction from his own concerns. "And in summer, this area must be stunning. Why, Michigan has an abundance of wildflowers, many of them rare. In one county alone, four hundred distinct species of wildflowers have been counted."

"And you know this why?" Kowalski demanded, at the same time as Vecchio said, "That's great, Benny, but right now it's nuclear winter." The two Chicagoans laughed in unison, then Vecchio said, "Fraser knows this stuff. Hell, when we went up North where he's from, he found a nest of... what were those? Night something. By ear."

"Furry night crawlers, Ray." Fraser replied.

"Augh!" Kowalski squirmed and exclaimed. "There were night crawler things in your ear? What, like in Wrath of Khan? I'm never goin' North then!"

Fraser looked baffled while Vecchio grinned smugly.

"Wow, Kowalski, you some kind of closet nerd? Nah, nothing crawled in anyone's ear."

Kowalski just looked smug. He'd pulled ahead with a solid lead on Paolo's car. He could live with Vecchio calling him schoolboy names. "Nerd like Mario Andretti, sure." he said.

Even Mario Andretti probably couldn't have steered over the frost heave, a raised crack in the road caused by the bad winter conditions, at the speed Ray was driving, and still maintained control of the SUV that had all the grace and steering control of a rhinoceros suddenly introduced to a pointy spear in the rear area.

"Shit!" Kowalski shouted, as he wrestled with the steering wheel, trying desperately to keep from running up the shoulder at speed. "Hang on to something."

The SUV didn't flip over when it hit the shoulder. It just skidded along, turning around one hundred and eighty degrees, skidded back down the shoulder and gracefully flopped to one side with a dramatic crunch.

**Author's Note: What cliffhanger? Seriously, thank you all so much for reading and commenting. It just makes me happy to know people are having fun. And yeah, we are winding down now, but there are still a couple of chapters and one of my infamously schmoopy epilogues to go.**


	14. Chapter 13: Angels with Bad Knees

**Disclaimer: I got rhythm, I got music, I do not got copyright on any of the professionally written characters involved in these ludicrous scenarios.**

**Chapter 13 - Angels with Bad Knees**

Xu was the first to move after the car skidded and dumped over onto its side. She was in the middle of the back seat, Ray Vecchio squashed under her, and Fraser's weight held off her only by his seatbelt. She was the only one who hadn't had a moment of contact between her head and a solid window surface as the car took its tumble, and the other occupants of the SUV were mutually stunned. Xu reached up and pushed the door by Fraser open, then unsnapped her seatbelt and pushed herself out of the car, her booted foot pressing heavily on Ray Vecchio's thigh.

Ray Vecchio's moan was enough to clear Fraser's mind. He shook his head and took in the moans and movements of the two other men. They were alive and conscious, so he was free, in fact obligated, to pull himself out of the vehicle and pursue Xu. He emulated her plan, ensuring he had a firm grip on the door frame before releasing his seatbelt. Fraser managed to avoid kicking Ray by virtue of hauling himself out of the car with the full strength of his overtaxed upper body. He tumbled out and lay on the frozen ground a moment, catching his breath. The road was the only practical surface for Xu to run on. The shoulder was too icy for her to scramble up. Fraser rolled to his knees and pushed off to his feet, giving himself a burst of speed from his momentum. The road was slippery enough that Xu hadn't got far when Fraser launched a tackle at her, pressing her to the ground and grabbing her wrists.

Xu rolled over in Fraser's grip, panting harshly as the wind was knocked out of her. "Let me go!" she demanded. "Let me go." Xu repeated the plea, low this time, all her vulnerability and charm pushed into the three words. "You have to let me go. If they catch me- you don't understand."

Fraser set his jaw, implacable. "I can't do that." he said. "You will be arrested, but you will be under the protection of the rule of law."

Xu laughed bitterly. "As if the law can protect me from my enemies. Please. Please, Benton. Let me go."

Fraser relaxed his grip slightly, unsettled by her pleading tone and the tears that threatened at the corners of her eyes. He was also having trouble on sheer physical grounds, spasms of hot pain burning across his shoulders as he adjusted from sitting still too long in the car to the jarring accident and his athletic tackle.

Xu didn't move immediately to take advantage of Fraser's weakness. He still had too much of the upper hand, and he had experienced her bait and switch tactics before, when she had played meek only to try to stab him. Xu relaxed under Fraser's grip, giving him further reason to follow the imperative of muscles that demanded he stretch and change his hold.

Xu switched to pleading in Cantonese, throwing Fraser off even more from his delicate equilibrium. Xu used all of the tricks of an actress, calling up the young, scared girl that she had once been. "Oh, God, I had to escape, please understand, I never wanted to hurt you. I had no choice. They'll kill me, please let me go."

"I won't let anyone hurt you." Fraser promised. "But I can't let you go." He knew he couldn't trust her again, mustn't. But it was hard to deny his strongest instinct, to protect the weak. Logic and sentiment were pulling him at odds to himself. He closed his eyes, hoping to clear the vision of Xu as pathetic and helpless, as the wounded dove, and restore the clarity with which he knew she was all sharp danger and treachery, the hawk waiting to strike.

Fraser's moment of inner conflict gave Xu the edge she needed. She bucked her hips up suddenly, throwing Fraser off with a well-practiced move that used his weight against him. Before Fraser could react to her move, the trained killer had her arm around his throat, holding him from behind, her knee pressing into his back, pressing him down into the ground. Xu gripped the wrist of the arm that she had around Fraser's neck with her other hand, securing the lock before he had time to tuck his chin down and protect himself from her crushing grip against his larynx.

"You should have let me go when I pleaded." she said, reverting to English. "I'm sorry, Ben, but this is goodbye."

Fraser expected to die then. His mind flashed to a starkly colored illustration in a forensic text book showing the delicate, U shaped hyoid bone that sat at the top of the larynx snapped, a sign any medical examiner would read as evidence of death by strangulation. Xu was holding tightly enough that it wasn't easy for Fraser to breathe. He expected that his world would soon narrow down to a black tunnel, with the mysteries waiting for him when the last light blinked out. It took several rapid beats of his heart for him to realize that he was still alive.

Fraser stirred his brain from the shock of bracing for death and pushed his attention out to the woman who held his life in her hands. He held still, feeling an uncanny certainty that if he struggled at this exact moment, Xu would finish choking him. Something was keeping him alive. The way her breathing was uneven, the way the pulse in her wrist fluttered against the pulse in his neck, both racing. She was off-balance, too, and Fraser fought to comprehend why the woman with a long career of merciless murder behind her had stayed her hand in his case. He hung in limbo, forcing himself not to panic at the way his breathing was constrained.

Xu could have sworn that she was going to press her chokehold close until Fraser's breathing stopped, her muscular forearm against his throat making that a quicker task than it might sound. She'd done it often before. It was a quiet way of killing. She was every bit as startled as Fraser to realize that she hadn't, that she held him at her mercy and was, without conscious thought, showing him mercy. Conscious thought confused things, and her heart thumped in her chest as she struggled with what had never been a decision before, but always a certainty.

-=-=-

Vecchio and Kowalski untangled themselves from the wreck at the same time. Vecchio was closer to Fraser and Xu as he pulled himself out of the SUV, just in time to see the reversal of fortunes as Xu broke Fraser's hold and put him in her own. Vecchio dropped to one knee, holding the gun Ray Kowalski had given him in both hands. He couldn't see a clear shot.

Kowalski knelt beside Vecchio. He didn't want to try to shoot Xu with the machine pistol. He wasn't used to it and was afraid there was too much chance he wouldn't be able to control the trajectory of the bullets, even setting it to fire only two or three rounds at a time. Fortunately, Mikey was the kind of guy to carry more than one spare gun, (and Kowalski had some very specific thoughts about the probable insecurities of an alter-ego who would carry a gun as large and hard to conceal as the MP5) so Kowalski pulled a .22 out of his ankle holster. It was a pea-shooter to the Scardinas, but it was light, and Kowalski knew it well. He just wished he had his glasses. Xu's body was over Fraser's, and it would be dangerous to try to hit her without clear vision.

"Take the shot." Kowalski hissed at Vecchio.

Vecchio knelt, frozen, as he watched Xu hold Fraser in what could be a killing grip, until, after a pause that felt like it lasted for hours, Fraser finally brought his hands up in a scrabbling, panicky motion to try to pull Xu's arm away from his throat. Vecchio couldn't shoot. His hands were shaking. He knew what would happen. He'd aim for Xu and - Vecchio knew with gut certainty that his bullet would drill through Fraser instead. Because he had been aiming for Victoria. He couldn't do it again, and his mouth was too dry to reply to Kowalski and tell him _he_ needed to take the shot. He'd never forgive himself if he couldn't shoot and save Benny, but he was gripped by terror.

"Take the goddamn shot." Kowalski said. Vecchio swallowed and tried to steady his hands. Seconds were rolling past, seconds that were crucial to getting the Mountie out alive.

Kowalski sighed. He didn't know _why_ Vecchio wasn't shooting, but that left it up to him. He sighted as carefully as possible without his glasses, thankful that the distance was small, and fired. The bullet skimmed past Fraser's head and dug a shallow groove down Xu's side, from shoulder to hip. She fell away from Fraser, leaving him gasping for breath. As soon as he realized what happened, Fraser launched to his knees beside Xu, taking his sweater off.

-=-=-

"My god, she's bleeding. She's bleeding." Fraser said, his voice sounding raw. He pressed the blue sweater he'd been wearing against the wound, not noting or caring that Kowalski's shot was only a scratch, a shock to the system but not a fatal threat to Xu.

Fraser saw blood fall on the snow on the ground under her. He saw Irene Zuko tumble, a bullet ripping through her, Xu's dark hair transformed to Irene's. Irene who was innocent of anything but being born into the wrong family. He saw Victoria's face as she knew he was going to turn her in, Victoria's face, later, as he fell from the train, Ray's bullet in his back. He saw a mask of pain under dark hair. Another body lying in the snow, seen through a cabin window, the red seeping into the white, somewhere far distant and long ago, not even a memory, just a glimpse of something teasing on the edges of conscious knowledge, like the curled up scrap of a photograph with a face the he should know as well as his own.

He saw Xu at last for what she was, both vile and corrupt, and also broken by suffering, her own suffering not lessened by what it had hardened her into. What he had made Victoria into. What no one should have done to Irene, Irene who should have been untouched by it.

The cycle of violence and hurt. It wouldn't stop. There was blood on his hands and people suffered and then they went on to make the same hell for other people to suffer in. Fraser knew he wasn't quite in his right mind. The ache at his throat, the dizzy tiredness that he couldn't shake told him that there were reasons why he shouldn't trust what he saw or thought now. But he looked down and saw a face long lost and beloved, adored and barely remembered. The cycle began so long ago for him. The suffering, and the hell on earth that was made for him, that he made for Victoria, for Irene and Xu. For the woman. In the snow. Her hair - not black. No, that- he grasped at memory that fled from him, feeling half out of his wits from fatigue, pain and the strain of the last few days.

Not that feeling a shade off from reality was new, not with his father's persistent haunting. Speaking of whom - a hand ghosted over his shoulder.

"Son. Not now. You don't want to know. Not now. I hope you never have to. You didn't see anything. I was sure you didn't. You were such a strong, brave young man at the funeral. But you can't have seen -" The ghost broke off his own rambling with a curt order: "Now listen to your partner."

Then Ray Vecchio was shaking his shoulder, Kowalski leaning in close, both of them telling him he had to move, get into cover. Fraser shook his head clear of the vision that troubled him just in time to experience Vecchio and Kowalski dragging him bodily behind the wrecked SUV.

-=-=-

Fraser had time to notice and worry about the large bump developing on Ray Kowalski's forehead, and the corresponding bruise to Ray Vecchio's temple and cheek from the car crash, and Vecchio and Kowalski had time enough to worry about how slowly Fraser was moving, when the car carrying Paolo, Toe, and the two drivers pulled up beside the crashed SUV. What had seemed like an eternity of cascading horrors had only been brief minutes since the SUV overturned.

Kowalski thrust the .22 with which he'd shot Xu toward Fraser, who was leaning on the wheelbed of the SUV.

"No, thank you, I-" Fraser croaked.

"Don't bother." Vecchio said. "He won't, and he's in no shape to, anyway."

Kowalski raised an eyebrow, both at Fraser's refusal to be armed, and the rough tenderness in Vecchio's voice. An old argument there, he guessed.

"Okay then." Kowalski said, stuffing the .22 into the waistband of his jeans. Paolo wanted to play, Paolo got to go up against the beautiful, ostentatious, deadly weapon he had personally given Kowalski.

Paolo Scardina walked toward the three injured men, his own weapon held low. With Toe and Paolo's driver behind him, also holding their guns out of the line of sight from the road, the party looked no more suspicious than any good samaritans stopping to help stranded motorists. Kowalski noticed smugly that Marco's driver was not with them. Presumably Ray's belt across the head when he stole the SUV had been effective in keeping one of the bad guys out of the picture, which was something.

"Mikey." Paolo said. His tone conveyed disappointment.

"Ray, actually." Kowalski replied.

Paolo looked disconcerted.

"No, he's Ray." he said, pointing his gun at Vecchio, who was holding Kowalski's 9mm steadily.

"No, I'm Ray, too." Kowalski said, flashing a manic grin entirely unlike Mikey's dead-eyed smile.

Paolo shook his head impatiently.

"Mikey, Ray, what the fuck ever." Paolo said. "You betrayed me. I'm disappointed."

"And you're an asshole, and yet, strangely, that does not disappoint me." Kowalski smarted back.

"You two want to get a room?" Vecchio felt the need to add. It was sheer bravado, but the whole operation currently appeared to be running on bravado. Out of the necessity of proving his own testicular fortitude equal to that of the posturing Kowalski, what could he do but join in?

Paolo's attention turned to Vecchio.

"Shut up, Detective." he said. "You should just keep ya mouth shut. Your only role here is to help me keep the Constable in line. After all, there are three of us, and only two of you with guns. And knowing the Constable, I'm sure that I only need _one_ of you to keep him co-operative. Isn't that right, Constable? Are you going to beg for your friend's life now?" Paolo's voice became low and menacing, directed only at Fraser. "I told you there would be consequences for disobedience."

Vecchio and Kowalski moved in closer to Fraser, both sensing that he desperately needed their support. Fraser found that while his mind had bounced back quite resiliently from Paolo's tortures, his body seemed to want to betray him, as he felt a trembling that made his hands shake, and his mouth dried up.

"How about I let you choose which cop I keep alive as incentive, and which I do right now?" Paolo said with a soft chuckle.

"How about you eat shit and die?" Kowalski spat back, waving the MP5 demonstratively. "There are three of you, sure, but I can take out at least two of you before you get a chance to shoot. And I guess Vecchio knows what to do with that." He waved at the 9mm in Vecchio's hands. "Odds seem pretty even, and Fraser ain't dancing to your tune."

So, it was a stand-off. Neither side appeared willing to budge. Fraser sought desperately for some way to swing the odds in their favor. He would not choose between Ray Vecchio and Ray Kowalski. He would die rather than let either of the fine Chicago policemen take a bullet.

"Give it up, Scardina." Vecchio said. "Sooner or later, even the hick highway patrol out here is going to notice that our vehicle is not the right way up. Just give up and drive away."

As if summoned, a large, battered jeep bearing a logo on the door that declared it to belong to the world of law enforcement passed in the opposite direction, the direction the convoy had been heading before Kowalski rescued Ray Vecchio and Fraser and turned the SUV back toward Indiana and ultimately Chicago. The jeep slowed and then made a U-turn, pulling in just past the overturned SUV.

The sight that emerged from the Jeep made more than one jaw drop in astonishment and disbelief.

First emerged an older, rugged looking man in a dusty-brown sheriff's uniform. He caused no excitement, but the figures that followed him did. Next jumped out a large, formidable grey and white canine with a snarl marring his muzzle. Then came a rumpled looking, world-weary man in shirtsleeves, then a grey haired Mountie resplendent in full-dress uniform who took the snarling wolf by the scruff of his neck.

"Put your weapons down and surrender." the sheriff said to the stunned Paolo and his entourage.

Paolo, Toe and Paolo's driver slowly complied, seeing clearly that there was no route of escape, and having no wish to go down in a glorious rain of gunfire when there were such things as high-priced lawyers walking the earth.

Fraser staggered forward as Diefenbaker broke free of the older Mountie's grip and barrelled toward him. Fraser dropped to his knees and embraced the wolf, looking up at Lieutenant Welsh of the Chicago PD, and Sergeant Buck Frobisher, RCMP, and usually stationed out the back of the frozen beyond.

Fraser found his tongue after a moment. "It's good to see you, Sir. You're a very welcome Deus Ex Machina." he said.

"Actually, we came in a car." Welsh said, not entirely sure what Fraser meant, but venturing a vague guess. Welsh stepped past Fraser and joined the local sheriff in cuffing their suspects and reading them their rights.

**Author's Note: Seriously, here we are again. One chapter and an as-yet unwritten epilogue to go. I hate this part, it's hard to let go of the ones that were fun to write. Thanks for coming along for the ride. It'll be a week until I can post the final chapter, so hang in there! Theories about Fraser seeing his mother's death and repressing it all so thoroughly as to not ask basic questions like, "Hey, Dad, what did Mom die of, by the way?" owe much to various other writers' interpretations of _Call of the Wild_. Theories of violence begetting violence and suffering begetting suffering are courtesy of religious and philosophical texts handed down through the ages.  
**

**Oh, and for the record, Constable Fraser, I totally foreshadowed the cavalry, it's not my fault if you don't read fanfic you're starring in. _Deus ex_ my ass. (Arguing with the characters in my own writing. I'm either on the way to becoming Italo Calvino or deeply in need of sleep. In light of game seven going into OT last night, I'll let you guess which.)  
**


	15. Chapter 14: A Fine Balance

**Disclaimer: Still not mine.  
**

**Chapter 14 - A Fine Balance  
**

After watching Paolo Scardina and the three thugs have their rights read to them and handcuffs assigned between them - the sheriff had one pair and Welsh had one pair, so Paolo was handcuffed to his driver and Toe was handcuffed to Marco's driver - Ray Vecchio cleared his throat.

"Aside from in a car, Lieutenant, how _did_ you get to us?"

Welsh turned back to face his detective, the Mountie who was still crouched on the ground more or less leaning on the wolf, and a blond man who was hanging back from the action looking sheepish, slouched against the sheriff's jeep, and who looked strikingly familiar.

"Ah, well, Detective, when one of my men disappears on some hush-hush Federal snipe hunt, and when subsequently I receive a staticky call from said man, that drops out before providing me with any pertinent information, and when I get a special visit from Sergeant Frobisher with the wolf in tow, I begin to think that my not inconsiderable experience in the field may be of use. Besbriss got the phone company to tell us the closest tower to where you called from, and I was interested to discover, with her aid on the computer, that the Scardina family owned a piece of property out that way."

The sheriff turned around to listen to the Lieutenant unfolding the story.

"Sergeant Frobisher and I arrived in North Liberty, and the good Sheriff Buckley here was reasonably sure that there had been noise complaints about the Scardina farm."

At this, Welsh touched his finger to his nose, and Sheriff Buckley smirked. It was easy to deduce that he was happy to find an excuse to roust out the mob family squatting in his neighborhood.

"Sheriff Buckley deputized Sergeant Frobisher and myself. Upon arriving at the Scardina residence this morning, Diefenbaker made a precipitous entrance, and Sheriff Buckley argued that his barking at an interior door gave us probable cause to enter and search the premises."

Fraser gathered enough energy to look appalled at this breach of civil liberties, but both Rays were nodding appreciatively at the weather-beaten sheriff.

"The door led down stairs to a cellar where your wolf, Constable Fraser, became agitated."

Welsh swept a glance over Ray Vecchio and the other, familiar, man. Something in their expressions confirmed the impression formed by Diefenbaker's enraged howling in the cellar. Whatever happened there had happened to Constable Fraser and had not been - good.

"Sergeant Frobisher identified what appeared to be small spots of blood, and we proceeded to place six inhabitants of the house under arrest for suspected kidnapping and assault. Two of the six resisted arrest and we had to subdue them."

Welsh looked extremely pleased at that turn of events. Vecchio turned it over in his head. Marco would have been there, and Joey, Two-lips, and Joey's driver. The other two would be the cook and housekeeper. Two-lips and Joey were probably the hot-heads who resisted arrest. Marco was too canny for that. Well, good. Ray was sure Welsh, Frobisher and the sheriff had been suitably ungentle in their handling of the situation. He had seen Frobisher under pressure and seen pure steel in the man. Vecchio was certain that if he thought those men had harmed Fraser, he would be capable of anything.

"Unfortunately," Welsh continued, "none of those gentlemen were forthcoming with your location, and we didn't have time to question them at length. Jurisdiction notwithstanding, and it is a hot mess, with all the crossing state lines you boys have been doing, we decided to head North."

Fraser's brow wrinkled. "But sir," he said, "I can understand you concluding that we would have been headed to Canada based on the slim information that you may have had, but how did you decide which way to follow us at the junction of Interstate Highway 69 and Interstate Highway 94?"

Vecchio rolled his eyes at Fraser's question, then he noticed with surprise and some amusement that the three men who had ridden so timely to their rescue were now looking embarrassed. Sergeant Frobisher even tugged his collar in a gesture that looked like pure Fraser nerves.

"Ah, well. Years of experience." Welsh said.

"But-" Fraser still looked puzzled, his eyes wide.

"Son, we flipped a coin." Sheriff Buckley put in.

Vecchio grinned, and found himself shooting a glance at Kowalski, who shared his amusement, although it was veiled behind a look of uncertain reserve.

"Hey, wait a second." Kowalski said, straightening up from his slouch. "Where did Xu get to?"

Fraser shot to his feet and wobbled. Vecchio put a hand out to steady him. "I didn't see where she went." Vecchio said. "She can't have got far. You winged her pretty good." His voice held grudging thanks.

Fraser walked the perimeter of the scene, avoiding the road with its sparse traffic. He found some blood spotting leading off from where Xu had been lying, but no other sign of the woman.

Vecchio explained to Welsh that Xu was the woman known to them as Dr. Zhang Xiaoxu, causing Welsh to look even more concerned than he had. In a few terse words he filled Buckley and Frobisher in on the situation. Fraser came back to them.

"I don't know how she got up the shoulder or where she went but there's no sign of her that I can track, sir. Perhaps if I -"

Welsh put a hand on Fraser's arm. "Nothing you can do right now, Constable." he said. "We'll put an APB out."

The sheriff popped the front driver's side door of his jeep open and grabbed the radio to do just that. The dispatcher notified him that a motorist had been forced at knifepoint from his car nearby, and it seemed as though Xu was fleeing the state as quickly as possible, from the direction in which she'd driven away.

The sheriff asked the dispatcher to send out an ambulance. One of the perpetrators seemed to be concussed, and would need to be seen. But more pressing than that, to his eyes, all three men they'd rescued were in need of patching up. The young Mountie looked about to drop, his skin pale and clammy and pupils wide. Welsh's Detective Vecchio had quite a bruise forming on the side of his head, and the unknown man who was still standing on the outside of things with a look of desperate hunger on his face had a hefty bump coming up on his forehead.

Welsh had come to the same conclusion; plus another one. "Vecchio, you're falling asleep on your feet. Go get in Sheriff Buckley's jeep. You're no use like this." He leaned in closely enough to whisper roughly, "and the Constable looks shocky. Sit on him if he gets ideas about running after the lady."

Welsh turned his glance on Kowalski. "You too, Detective Kowalski. I play poker with your Captain, he'd have my hide if I don't bring you back in good shape."

He turned away before Kowalski could see his satisfaction at the bloom of warmth on Kowalski's face, the need to be included as a part of this strange pack so obvious in the skinny detective's eyes, particularly once Welsh recognized him and remembered him as being bounced from one high-risk undercover operation to another. Welsh thought he could use a good man like that at the 27th; anyone who could get along well enough with Vecchio under duress like this might even be able to partner with him. Someone had to keep Vecchio and the Mountie from getting themselves killed, and it was giving Welsh too many grey hairs.

Frobisher harrumphed. "Yes, you youngsters go and wait in the jeep. Let the old men take care of guard duty a while."

While Vecchio bundled Fraser into the back of the jeep, noting with alarm that his normally impervious partner was shivering in the cold without the sweater he'd taken off to tend Xu, Kowalski bounced up into the driver's seat, turning the key in the ignition and setting the heat to high.

Vecchio took off his jacket and draped it over Fraser, while Diefenbaker stuffed himself between the two of them, showing very doggy enthusiasm to see his humans, and meet the new packmate. Kowalski ignored Vecchio and Fraser for the moment, figuring neither fusser nor fuss-ee would appreciate the attention. He could not ignore the wolf.

"Ugh! Your wolf is doing disgusting things to my ear!" Kowalski exclaimed.

Fraser smiled and murmured vaguely, "It could be a sign of affection."

Vecchio snorted. "Or the mutt thinks you look like lunch. I thought you had better taste than that, Dief."

For all his alleged deafness, Diefenbaker seemed to hear this, because he turned his attention to Vecchio and gave him a thorough swipe of the tongue across his face.

"Love you too, Diefenbaker, but lay off." Vecchio said, wiping his face with his shirt sleeve. He couldn't be mad at the wolf after seeing how his presence lifted Benny's spirits.

Fraser leaned back into the seat, letting his eyes slip closed. He felt warm. Not just physically, but a sort of spiritual warmth that came from listening to the two men and a wolf bicker back and forth good-naturedly around him. He could feel their anxious regard on him, but they had the common decency not to fret openly, but to push it aside behind their relaxed, albeit decidedly dark and cynical, banter, as was often the coping mechanism of men who'd seen too much.

Words, words about what would happen to the Scardinas in prison, rough boasting comparisons of the relative badness of the neighborhoods they'd grown up in, the fights they'd been in, car talk, 'oh, good,' Fraser thought vaguely, 'another one,' as Ray Kowalski boasted about the GTO he and his father had rebuilt the engine on, countered by Ray Vecchio's unfathomable love of his lamented Buick Riviera. Fraser almost giggled as he thought about joining in with a tale of the best pack of sled dogs he'd ever run.

Kowalski won points with Vecchio by joining in his mourning for the green land-shark of a car that had been blown up so recently. And more points for smoothing the conversation past Gardino's death in the explosion that destroyed the car, somehow steering things on to a comparison of his mother's cooking with Ma Vecchio's Italian food, giving the two men yet another arena in which to compete for prestige. It left Fraser with no duty but to relax, let down his guard and let the feeling build in him of being safe, of having his friends safe and out of things.

"Benny." Vecchio shook Fraser gently. "The ambulance is here."

In fact, two ambulances had arrived to transport the four patients, though both Vecchio and Kowalski firmly denied that they needed such assistance.

"C'mon, open your eyes for us." Kowalski said. He slid out of the driver's seat and came around to the passenger door where the ambulance attendants were working to get Fraser onto a stretcher. Vecchio leaned over from his side of the car, helping to lift Fraser out.

Fraser's eyes fluttered open, looking up from the supine position in which he was being placed.

"Ray." he said.

"Right here, Benny." Vecchio answered.

"Ray?" Fraser asked again, and Kowalski leaned over.

"Me? Yeah, I'm here, buddy."

Fraser looked like he was trying to say something, and Kowalski rushed to reassure him.

"You're safe now. These guys are just gonna take care of you." Kowalski said.

"No." Fraser said. "You- both?" He was bothered by being reduced to this inarticulate state, but the creeping exhaustion seemed to have won out over his iron will.

"Yeah, Benny." Ray Vecchio said, understanding at once. "We're both safe. Dief is here. Everyone's fine. We'll be there at the hospital."

"Ah. Good." Fraser said, closing his eyes again.

-=-=-

The ambulances were accompanied by possibly every police or sherrif's vehicle in the county, the locals eager to get in on a bust that had apparently attracted law enforcement from Illinois, Indiana, and improbably, the North West Territories. Welsh rubbed his head, feeling a headache coming on. He almost wished he were going to the hospital in the back of an ambulance like the rest of the lucky bastards, instead of being stuck here to co-ordinate the whole unnecessary mess while they awaited the pleasurable company of the Feds.

Vecchio got to ride with Fraser, which left Kowalski resigned to riding in with the driver he'd given a concussion, and a sheriff's deputy. At least the small town hospital they ended up in did not have a busy Emergency Room. Both Ray Kowalski and Vecchio were bandaged up, cleared of the suspicion of concussion or whiplash and ready to leave by the time Welsh arrived. Fraser, too tired to protest, had been admitted for observation overnight. Aside from exhaustion, muscle spasms, dehydration, and a lack of food, he was on an IV antibiotic drip to fight off infection from some of the burst blisters on his back. None of the burns were deep, but the quantity and surface they covered was problematic. It was the doctor's informed opinion that if Fraser had been functioning at all, it was on pure grit.

Sergeant Frobisher did his best to get Diefenbaker into the hospital to be with Fraser, but the staff were blandly implacable, in a sweet-toned but firm way that brooked no argument. Resolving to find a way, later, to get the wolf where he needed to be, where Fraser needed him to be, Frobisher retreated to regroup. The first thing on his agenda was to get Diefenbaker the long walk, followed by a good meal and bowl of water, that he deserved after being cooped up in the plane from the Territories, then the car from Chicago for so long.

Only the lack of empty beds prevented the same doctor who treated Fraser from admitting Ray Vecchio and Ray Kowalski for observation overnight, and Welsh withheld laughter as he watched them scolded like children to immediately take themselves off to the town's only hotel, get rooms, and get some much needed sleep.

"Nah, that's all right, I can wait here." Kowalski protested, and Vecchio almost in synch said, "I appreciate your concern, doc, but I'm staying with Benny."

If he could have taken each of them by the ear, Welsh would have. Instead he settled for using his most commanding voice.

"If you won't follow doctor's orders, you'll follow mine. I'm driving you both to the hotel now." With the Scardinas rounded up and Xu presumed to be headed for the hills, there was no reason for the two detectives to doze uncomfortably in the hospital waiting room.

"But-" Kowalski was about to argue that Welsh assuredly wasn't the boss of him, but there was something in the Lieutenant's expression that suggested it might not be a great idea.

Kowalski and Vecchio slept the rest of the afternoon away at the hotel. They woke up in time to eat at the small hotel lounge, where Vecchio hid his pleasure at Welsh's suggestion that Kowalski transfer to the 27th behind a barrage of sarcastic remarks. Kowalski didn't hide his pleasure at all, his mobile face lighting up with delight when he understood that Welsh wanted him, wanted him to be a part of the team.

-=-=-

Fraser slept on, too, drugged and exhausted. He was sleeping in the evening when the slim figure slipped into his room.

The lights in the hospital room were low, and Xu, in her own inimitable way, had already found adequate time and supplies to get herself cleaned up and bandaged, the other reason for risking an unofficial trip to the hospital. She was now disguised in loose-fitting scrubs. She leaned over the hospital bed, finger tips tracing the tired lines on Fraser's face, and pressed a cold, chaste kiss to his lips. He could have been so much to her, but she was going to have to punish him.

Xu, being a woman of formidable resources, had made frankly short and easy work of hailing a passing car not far from the scene of the stand-off with the Scardinas, and forcing the driver out onto the road at knife-point. She made a big show of turning the car around across the lanes of the highway with a squeal of tires, and speeding off in what seemed like the opposite direction of the strife, but she had other plans. It was no problem to turn the nondescript sedan she'd stolen onto a side road that paralleled the highway, and drive back past the scene cluttered with ambulances and squad cars without being spotted, and it was absurdly simple to locate the town most likely to house Fraser in its hospital. It wasn't like the area was brimming with world-class medical facilities. The drive had given her long enough to contemplate this infuriating man, and why she hadn't and couldn't kill him, and what, exactly, she was going to do about it.

The first thing Xu did now that she was standing in his hospital room was find the button that triggered the next morphine dose for Fraser from the dispenser hanging by the bed. Xu didn't need to guess that he wouldn't have pressed the button for the extra dose himself. It just wasn't his way. It was hers, though, cautious and canny. This man had not been helpless when he was chained and tortured in the Scardina's cellar. She had no illusions that he was helpless now, but he was, at least, heavily doped and at a disadvantage.

How was it that this man, this policeman, who on first appearances was straightforward and open, could have stirred in her such a maelstrom of feeling that no-one had ever provoked, not since she had taught herself to lock emotion away, meaningless, and search only for the power to take care of herself with no regard for others? Xu's hand brushed over a lock of Fraser's hair, pushing it off his forehead.

Upon first meeting Fraser, Xu had been attracted to him, naturally, on a purely base level. He had shown up at an inopportune time, but she hadn't foreseen that he'd be anything other than a minor, handsome nuisance. That he had foiled a well-planned industrial espionage scheme was beyond frustrating. And then, when she'd fallen into the hands of the FBI and the RCMP, it had been an opportunity to study this man who'd been her downfall, and to find a way to get back at him while using him to her advantage. Corporal Dolenz of the RCMP had been only too forthcoming with files and reports about the man who lay in the hospital bed, painting a far more interesting, tantalizing picture of a flawed human with weaknesses that she could exploit.

What was so infuriating about him was the way those flaws, the mistakes he'd made and the tragedies that had befallen Benton Fraser, a man violently orphaned and whose sole recorded relationship involved crime and betrayal, those mistakes and tragedies had not changed who he was fundamentally. Xu stared down at him. His face was so clean, even with a ragged evening edge of stubble. So young. As if all the troubles that she had read of had passed over him, as if his soul was washed clean of mistakes and disasters by the purity of his intentions.

Xu's hand tangled in Fraser's hair, tugging it. He didn't rouse, she didn't expect him to.

He made her feel a hot anger that she had not felt for anyone since the prison guard who took the last of her innocence, after her fall from grace as an actress. This moral certainty of Fraser's, this fortitude and strength of self to go on, when he should be like her, it made her crazy. He should be dirtied and down on the ground like she was, after all that he had seen, and done, and had done to him. Xu despised this man, and knew in her heart why.

Like the old proverb said, not every finger could be the same length. She had faced trials, but so had he. But everything she saw of him, his gentle heart and strength of will, told her sickened soul that he had prevailed and stayed true to the good man he was meant to be, while she had- she had- anything that could have been just and right about her life had been obliterated, and until she met this man, Xu had never once blamed herself, only the cruelties that had been done to her. Fraser forced her to recognize that what she had become was in part a choice, and the compassion that shone from his eyes broke through her armor and forced her to see that choice and loathe what she was now. She was everything that he had not become. Fire burnished precious metals and destroyed the dross. She was destroyed.

Which was why, Xu knew, even as she looked at him lying unprotected beneath her hands, hands that had killed many men and no few women, that she couldn't kill Benton Fraser. It would be a sign, one that only she saw, but still, an admission of weakness. To kill him was to give in to her terror at the unforgivable hope of redemption that he had held out to her. Xu knew she was beyond redemption. To face her flaws and continue in spite of them was the only path left for her now.

But to leave Fraser alive and unpunished was a weakness, too. Because Xu must also face the fact that his freely offered compassion and kindness had stirred tender, fragile emotions in her, as well as anger. Those were dangerous emotions that she would not allow to drive her. Her reasons and mechanisms for protecting herself remained practical. Allowing sentiment to cloud her vision was more than foolish. To punish him would surely kill the sentiment in both of them, not only destroy his kindness to her, but both satisfy the flaring anger in her and also crush down any sort of fondness that she might feel toward him, bury it under the more familiar malice.

Xu's hand stroked down over Fraser's cheekbones, his red-lipped mouth, chapped and split. She slipped her ever-present slender dagger from her sleeve. At first, in the car driving to the hospital, she had thought that a fitting revenge would be to slash that face up, render his handsome face ugly and hard to look upon.

But then, Fraser seemed to have no physical vanity. And that big heart of his would still shine through any disfigurement she imposed on him. So Xu had changed her mind. There was something she could do to him that would truly hurt him. Something that would kill his damned ability to pity her, drown it in despair and pity for himself. She pushed down the blanket covering Fraser and reached for his left wrist. Soft bandages covered the welts from the handcuffs. Xu pulled down the gauze, exposing Fraser's strong wrist. It was a perfect target for revenge. She would do each hand, avoiding the arteries with her skilled knife-work, severing muscles, tendons, ligaments. Quick medical attention would ensure that Fraser's life wasn't at risk from blood loss, but without the kind of immediate skilled surgical repair that wasn't available in a hospital like this, the deep cuts would cripple him. The dagger drew a red line across the smooth skin as Xu contemplated her first cut.

**Author's Note: Awk! Cliffhanger! I didn't see that coming. Xu demanded more exposition as to why she didn't kill Fraser, and then she demanded revenge. The good news is the next chapter will be a full final chapter, not an epilogue. The bad news is I haven't started writing it yet. Darn re-writes. Thank you all for the great encouragement so far! I hope I'm not keeping you too on edge here!  
**


	16. Chapter 15: Just Deserts

**Chapter 15 - Just Deserts**

Fraser's eyes opened, sudden sharp pain jolting him from the cloud-like pillowing of the morphine running through his system in larger doses than those to which he was accustomed. He must have made a sound of distress, because Xu's hand stilled, and she looked into his eyes.

Xu didn't say a word, but even confused and drifting, Fraser read some plain facts. He had hoped, when she spun her tale to him in the car, that she was telling the truth, that she was ready for change, to redeem her life. But that hope was gone. He couldn't reach her, now, even though he'd still have helped her if she wanted that. She didn't want him dead, or he'd be dead already. She wanted to hurt him in the worst way she could think of. And he couldn't risk reaching for the call button, because the cold-eyed woman in front of him was perfectly capable of killing anyone who came to help him.

For her part, Xu was well satisfied with what she saw in his dazed stare. Gone was the compassion that damned her, that judged all her choices in the very act of not judging her. That was wiped out, destroyed by her sadism. What was left was a plain determination, a grit that drove Fraser to struggle, though he was visibly aware of the opiate that pushed back against his will, undermining the appalling strength that he'd opposed her with. She smiled, a warmth lighting her face as she felt him twitch under her, trying to stir unwilling muscles to throw her off. Beautiful confusion, beautiful clarity. Though she would now carry the self-awareness that he'd given her, that she felt like a stone weight tied to her neck, she'd always have this moment, this time when he knew that she was going to hurt him irreparably, and could do nothing to stop her. He'd never give her outright terror; she didn't have time to take that. But the look in his eyes as his free hand swung uncoordinatedly at her was enough, enough to help her carry the weight.

-=-=-

Diefenbaker was sulking. Buck Frobisher had been around quite enough sled dogs to recognize a good sulk when he saw one. It was just like after moving a dog off the lead position further down the line. Well, not just like. Diefenbaker seemed to be particularly expressive in his sulk, his shoulders low and slinking as they walked through the snow in the evening gloom beside the one-story hospital in which Fraser lay.

"Yes, I know, but the only thing I could think of was dressing you in scrubs and wheeling you in in a wheel chair." Buck said. He'd never argued with his dogs, they knew who was boss. But Fraser's wolf seemed to have the effect of making him try to reason with the animal. Indeed, Diefenbaker responded to this statement with a small whine of displeasure.

"It's not like a big city hospital, boy. These are small town folk. Sharp eyes. Anyway, he'll be out in the morning, and you can see him through the window now."

Buck thought he must have persuaded the wolf, because the animal's ears pricked up, and his head rose out of the low position in which it was hanging. The wolf darted off at a run, and Buck suddenly worried that Diefenbaker was going to stage a break-in.

Diefenbaker skidded to a halt outside a window, the one that Buck had identified as belonging to Fraser's room. The wolf threw himself against the wall below the window, scrabbling with his claws and howling, his back paws slipping in the snow. Buck felt suddenly alarmed. This was no mere display of loyalty. He set off at a sprint himself, feeling a twinge in his bad leg. The view through the window shocked him. That had to be the woman. The one who'd entrapped Fraser into the dangerous undercover operation, her betrayal selling him into the hands of the mafia. She had a slender blade, and Buck could see ruby drops of blood welling on Fraser's wrist. The young Mountie was reacting slowly and clumsily, trying to fight, but with no chance to win.

Buck stepped back a half pace and brought his booted foot up, kicking the window in. He was glad he had gloves on, as he needed to haul himself over the sill and into the room. He rolled to his feet, gun drawn. Diefenbaker came through the window behind him in a scramble of fur and snow.

Xu brought the dagger up under Fraser's chin, the wan light of the hospital fluorescents sliding off a blade that looked like it deserved hot firelight or bright candle flame. Buck saw its dull gleam there and felt a calm resolve. She made it easy for him.

There lay his partner's son, a man Buck still thought of as wet behind the ears, the boy he'd seen at Robert Fraser's knee. And yet, like Robert Fraser before him, Benton Fraser had stood by Buck at one of his lowest moments, had shown the true mettle of one of the RCMP's finest.

There stood a woman with a trail of bodies and lies behind her. Buck would bring her in alive if he could. That would be what either Fraser man would want. But she pressed a deadly piece of tempered steel to Benton Fraser's throat. There was no decision. Almost before Diefenbaker's feet landed on the linoleum floor behind Buck, Buck met Xu with a force as fatal as the one she wielded. One clean shot, very little room to miss, straight to the head.

The knife fell out of her hand as Xu's lifeless body dropped down, a spray of blood and other matter standing out in vibrant and sickening contrast to the muted green of the hospital room wall. The slick red was spattered over Benton Fraser's pale face. She'd been leaning over him when Buck shot. Seconds after the concussive blast of the gun in the small room, Diefenbaker launched himself onto the bed, finding himself wrapped in shaking arms, as that bloodied face was pressed deep into the ruff of fur at his neck.

The shot brought the tiny hospital's one security guard to the room at a run. Frobisher set the gun down on the bedside table before the guard could arrive, raising his hands in surrender. For the long term, he wasn't worried about what would happen. Shooting in self-defense or the defense of another person was almost always solid protection against a murder charge. But in the short term, he didn't need to give any cause for the situation to get more complicated. If that was possible. It was already tangled up in five kinds of Federal red tape.

The guard burst into the room with _his_ gun already out, and took in the body on the floor, the large canine on the hospital bed, and the grey-haired man in an improbably red uniform with his hands up and an antiquated, but obviously still deadly, service pistol on a table well out of his reach.

"You'd best call the police, son. The woman had a knife to Constable Fraser's throat, I shot her. But I'm not looking for any more trouble."

-=-=-

The room that had been Fraser's hospital room was a-buzz with law enforcement. Fraser was quickly carted off into the hospital's operating room in a wheelchair, the young doctor on duty working to repair the one deep cut that Xu had inflicted on Fraser's wrist. Diefenbaker sat immovably outside the OR. Buck was technically under arrest, but not cuffed. The local sheriff was present, Welsh had appeared with both Ray Vecchio and Ray Kowalski following closely behind him, and just to add to the chaos, two FBI agents had arrived from the Detroit field office, and one other man whose agency was entirely unclear was also hovering. It seemed like things couldn't get more complicated as people argued over jurisdiction and Xu's lifeless body. The bloody scene lay as untouched as it could given the necessity of removing Fraser for immediate care.

Of course, it _could_ get more complicated, and it did, with the arrival of Corporal Dolenz to oversee the wreck of his ambitious operation. He strode into the hospital cloaked in a cloud of self-righteousness and perfect tailoring.

Dolenz found Welsh, Ray, Ray, and Frobisher standing in the corridor outside the hospital room as the FBI agents tussled with the local law inside. He didn't get past "What's going on-" before a crisply swung fist connected hard with his chin and dropped him to the floor.

"Vecchio!" Welsh barked. Ray Vecchio looked down at Dolenz as if the Corporal were dogshit on his Italian leather shoe.

"Detective Vecchio." Welsh said, his hand now resting on Ray's arm.

"This sonofabitch-" Ray spat the words, then appeared lost for more.

"I'm aware of Corporal Dolenz's transgressions, Detective. But you will restrain yourself." Welsh ordered.

Ray's stiff shoulders relaxed minutely. He took a step back.

"Yes, sir." he said, sullenly.

Buck Frobisher stepped forward, looking at the man who was getting himself up off the floor without any help from the men in the corridor, wiping blood from his mouth.

"You're Dolenz." Frobisher said.

"Corporal Dolenz." He added, belatedly, "Sir."

Dolenz's eyes flashed to Vecchio, who stood where Welsh held him, but whose whole frame quivered for violence. Dolenz didn't recognize the other man, with unruly blond hair and a fighter's stance, who was staring at him through narrowed eyes. Then he looked back to Frobisher, wondering who the Sergeant was, and what he was doing here.

"Corporal Dolenz." Frobisher made the name sound like an insult of the highest order.

"You sent Constable Fraser unprepared into an undercover job with next to no back-up and no way out."

The blond man stepped forward quickly.

"Wait a sec, this is the asshole who set up that cowboy gig?" Ray Kowalski demanded. He'd seen some poorly planned undercover operations in his time, but nothing to rival the sheer clumsiness of dropping Fraser and Vecchio into the Scardinas' laps.

"That's him." Vecchio confirmed coldly. Welsh didn't have time to grab Kowalski's arm before he swung out with a punch to rival Vecchio's.

Dolenz blinked up from the floor.

"You don't seem to be very popular around here." Frobisher said.

Dolenz felt an outraged astonishment. This unknown NCO and Detective Vecchio's superior, Welsh, were showing no signs of moving to restrain his second attacker.

"I-" he started to talk, but Frobisher cut him off.

"You are not going to say anything else right now. Get off the floor and come with me."

Frobisher pulled Dolenz into an unoccupied hospital room and closed the door. Motion sensors set the fluorescent light flickering on, illuminating walls of the same institutional green as Fraser's room, minus the blood spatters.

"I don't know who you are, Sir, but -" Dolenz spluttered.

"Sergeant Buck Frobisher. Inuvik detachment."

Dolenz looked puzzled.

"Constable Fraser's friend, foremost." Frobisher said in a warning tone of voice. "Don't get me wrong, son, I know you wouldn't have used Constable Fraser if you thought he still had friends with influence, but I am more than capable of making your life a living hell for what you put that man through."

"It was-"

"It was a naked power grab using Constable Fraser as a pawn. Don't try to kid me, son, I've seen it all before. You thought you were being so clever, you'd close down a major crime family and get all the glory."

Frobisher was now an ugly shade of red and Dolenz backed away, unsure of what he could say that would appease the man. Not that it mattered in the grand scheme of things. He had strings to pull to make sure he came out of all this unscathed. But he'd rather not be hit a third time, and the probability loomed. All because Fraser hadn't been competent enough to maintain his cover. And now the woman Dolenz had been running in the Scardinas' organization was dead, which was another thing somebody ought to explain to him. Dolenz puffed himself up again, secure in his own judgment.

"I don't know exactly what happened here, but -"

"Oh, no, of course not." Frobisher snapped. "You have no idea why those two men hit you. Let me tell you. Those two American police detectives were responsible for saving Constable Fraser's life after you hung him out to dry. Responsible for getting him out of the Scardinas' house after he was coerced into promising to work for the Scardinas. I don't know the details, but Constable Fraser was admitted to this hospital with burns over most of his back and some of his chest."

Dolenz turned an unappealing shade of grey that clashed nicely with the spreading red mark on his chin that would no doubt progress overnight into an impressively purple bruise. He swallowed. This was- this was not what was supposed to happen. Everything had seemed so straight forward.

"They. He was- how? What - do you know how-"

"How his cover was blown?" Frobisher guessed. He rolled his eyes heavenward. "You put too much trust in the woman. She pulled your strings like a puppet, not the other way around. She bought and sold Fraser to the Scardinas before you even went along with her hare-brained plan to bring you fame and glory."

Dolenz's mouth slumped open. He put his hand to his stomach, feeling a sudden roiling. He swallowed hard again before he could retch, his world shifting upside down as he had the cold shock of learning that he had inadvertantly handed over a fellow RCMP officer to ruthless killers to be tortured and broken.

Dolenz knew that he was ambitious and that people thought that he could be cold and ruthless in pursuit of his desire to move up through the ranks of the RCMP, but he'd always seen himself as furthering the security of his country, enforcing the law, seen his efforts for promotion as a noble ambition to be able to serve better. The shock to his self-image to know that his gullibility and eagerness to use the outcast Fraser in a dangerous operation had lead to such horrors, was worse than the two punches to the jaw by an order of magnitude. He staggered and sat in the chair beside the hospital bed.

"I- I never meant-"

Frobisher shook his head. "Of course you didn't mean." he said impatiently. "You just didn't think there was anyone to stand up for Constable Fraser if you put him into a dangerous situation."

Dolenz shook his head. "No. There just - there wasn't time! They were going to have someone killed. I - it - Constable Fraser was the perfect man for the job- but I- I never would have-"

Frobisher snorted, contempt clear in the sound. "But you did. I suggest you keep your head down while things are sorted out around here. And remember, if you ever think you can use Constable Fraser that way again, the man has friends who will see to it that you're the one who's stationed so far from Ottawa that anyone important will forget you ever existed."

Frobisher left Dolenz sitting slumped with his head in his hands. He had a feeling he'd made his point utterly clear. He found the usual suspects pacing in the small waiting area outside the OR, Ray Kowalski making Diefenbaker look sedate and relaxed by comparison. Apparently, having slugged Dolenz sufficiently, both Ray Vecchio and Ray Kowalski felt honor was satisfied and had no desire to be involved in the necessary investigation of Xu's death. Welsh sat in a chair with his arms crossed, looking tired, grumpy, and over all, protective of his men. Frobisher sat in chair one down from Welsh, carefully respecting the man's space.

"I'm getting too old for this." Welsh said in a low voice.

"Some days I feel like I was born too old for this." Buck said. "This life just eats the best of them alive, while toadies like Dolenz get ahead."

Welsh nodded, silently.

-=-=-

Two hours later the party broke up. Fraser made it through the minor surgery with a prognosis of a quick recovery. Xu hadn't had time to do significant damage before Diefenbaker and Buck Frobisher interfered. Fraser was once again in the land of the heavily sedated, although only after being roused long enough to give a statement for the benefit of the local sheriff, Welsh, and the FBI agents about the circumstances surrounding Xu's death. It seemed as though Buck would not have to face charges, although he would most likely have to stay in town until the case was officially closed. The American agencies were mostly keen that they were not embarrassed by a longstanding member of the RCMP being prosecuted. Buck quite frankly didn't give a tinker's damn one way or another. He'd have shot the woman even if it meant going to prison. He owed that much to Bob Fraser. And to Benton Fraser.

As they left the hospital, Buck had a feeling that it was a good thing there were two bars in the one horse town. He had every intention of dragging Harding Welsh to one of them, and it looked like Detectives Vecchio and Kowalski were headed rapidly toward the other. Every one of them needed the chance to cut loose for the night before the Chicago contingent faced the long trip home in the morning, and Buck faced the scrutiny of whoever passed for a prosecutor, and perhaps the chief of police if there was such a thing in these parts. This was definitely a boilermaker night.

Diefenbaker lay under Fraser's bed, the original immovable object, even in the face of the irresistible force of the charge nurse. He could hear his human move restlessly. He really needed what Fraser referred to as a 'B-A-T-H', as if Diefenbaker couldn't string that together. There was dried blood in his fur, clumping it together, from having Fraser's face pressed into his ruff seconds after the shooting. But even though his fur tugged unpleasantly, the way it was matted and stuck together, he wasn't leaving here for any reason until the human packmate was safely back with old Ray, the one whose home had much delicious food in it, and new Ray, the one with the candy bar in his pocket who smelled like starting a fight.

The doped sleep was wearing off, and Fraser came awake, at first gradually, and then with a start as he remembered the shot and Xu falling, the hot blood spraying out onto him. Fraser gasped for air and looked around the darkened hospital room. He was grateful for the night. He blessed the quiet hours when he could face the ugliness of being relieved that Xu was dead, relief that felt a lot like a deep nausea, although that could be the antibiotics and pain pills, now he was off all the IV medications but still being fed dose after dose by mouth.

Fraser blessed the dark hours that he would spend putting his armor back on, ready to be the strong partner Ray needed. He wouldn't let Ray down again. He clung fiercely onto the hope, even while he drifted in and out of sleep, between the shuffling visits of the nurses taking vital signs, the interrupted rhythm of a hospital that he was too familiar with, that the whole thing had not destroyed what was left of his friendship with Ray Vecchio.

He did anything but face the horror that another woman lay dead, a stone stacked on a high cairn in his heart.

-=-=-

**Author's Note: Truly, I didn't know until Buck did what he had to do. Yes, I know Fraser shouldn't take on so about the evil lady. Some issues of healing and friendship will be dealt with in the epilogue. Thanks for your patience, just one last part to come.**


	17. Epilogue

**Disclaimer: I tried to buy a Mountie and a pair of worldly Chicago cops, but in the end, they're still not mine.**

**Epilogue**

Welsh and Frobisher were among the last patrons out of one of the town's two bars. As they staggered back toward the hotel, leaning vaguely on each other, they finished the refrain of the folk song that'd been playing in the bar.

"_And it's no, nae, never. No nae never no more! I'll play the wild rover, no never, no more!_"

Buck stopped to give them a dignified round of applause as they finished the song at more or less the same time.

"I always liked those songs from the old country." Welsh said, his voice not quite slurred from whiskey and beer.

Buck slapped him on the arm and giggled. Welsh tilted his head at the giggling Canadian. It was an odd sound coming from the man's considerable bulk.

"We had... we had a transfer... exchange fellow. Over from England." Frobisher said as they took up their staggering once more. "One night over beer, the lads asked him to sing a few of... a few of the songs he knew." He snorted laughter again.

"Things have changed over there since we picked up our pub tunes. The Brit seemed confused by the request, but he gave it his best go. Our junior Constable fell off the chair when the exchange fellow started in with _'You're going home in the back of an ambulance.'_"

Welsh's face contorted into a sudden broad smirk as he caught the joke. He roared with laughter when Frobisher finished it.

"But you should have seen their faces when he sang, '_I've got a little song, it won't take long, all police are const .... ables!_'"

Welsh patted Frobisher on the back enthusiastically when his fit of laughter subsided, and they did a little drunken waltz of trying to stay upright and not tangle over each other's feet. It was during this reorientation that Frobisher caught sight of his first ever drunken apparition.

The figure was clad in slim-line stirrup pants leading down to old-fashioned snow shoes that looked like giant tennis rackets, and a jaunty red button-down shirt under a finely knit black sweater with traditional diamonds and x's across the yoke that, even drunk, Buck's trained observational skills recognized as the official sweater of the 1956 Norwegian Olympic Ski team. Trained observational skills, and the fact that Bob Fraser had worn that blasted thing to death before he'd finally thrown it in the rag bag during their partnership, some time late in the 1980s. The sweater currently looked as crisp and new as when it came out of its cellophane wrapper when Bob first bought it.

The absurd fur-lined hat topping the whole outfit was pure Bob, too. Frobisher blinked and shook his head to clear it. Certainly. he might be three sheets to the wind, but he'd never seen things before. He was doing well at ignoring the badly dressed ghost when it spoke. Or, rather, hissed.

"Psst. Buck. Over _here_."

Stage whispered, really. Frobisher performed an exaggerated double take, then spun to see if Welsh saw what he saw. Welsh apparently only saw that they were back at the hotel.

"I, ah, I have to see a man about a horse." Frobisher said, wandering toward a park only large enough for one bench and one tree, across the street from the hotel.

Welsh nodded sagely, apparently finding it not at all odd that Buck Frobisher would answer the call of nature in nature's arms, rather than in the comfort of the hotel room.

Buck cleared his throat. The ghost of Robert Fraser cleared his throat.

"You look - I assume incorporeal." Frobisher finally said. "I haven't seen that sweater look so good since 1972."

"Yes, well." Bob shrugged. "As a stand-in for people's subconscious concerns, I don't get much say about the wardrobe. Caroline was always on at me to throw this one out."

There was a repeat of the mutual throat clearing, then:

"So-"

"Well then-"

Buck made a motion for his former partner to speak first.

"Saved the boy's life today. I'm thankful."

"Somebody has to look out for the young pup." Frobisher said, dismissing his partner's effusive (for him) gratitude with some embarrassment.

"You will, won't you?" Bob asked.

"Of course. As much as I can."

Buck Frobisher stared his late partner down. They'd had words, more than once, about young Ben's complete suppression of his memories of the circumstance of his mother's death. Buck had mourned doubly when Bob was shot down. Now young Benton Fraser would have no family to turn to, no-one to speak plainly to him about Caroline's murder, when the time came, as the time must, that the ice broke over his heavily repressed childhood traumas. Reports from the events of the last two days strongly suggested that the ice was getting thin.

But here was Bob Fraser in the spirit, if not the flesh, and Buck's inebriated gaze spoke plainly of who would haunt whom, dead or not, if Bob didn't get his act together and look after his own boy, the way he'd failed to in life.

Ray and Ray were making their own way back to the hotel from the other bar in town. Each of them took in the vision of Buck Frobisher glaring expressively at thin air in the park, turned to the other to comment, and shook their heads in disbelief. Must have been too much whiskey.

-=-=-

Welsh arranged for a flight back to Chicago first thing the next morning, hangover be damned. Thanks to Diefenbaker's presence, and a general feeling that the three men who had been undercover needed some time to decompress from their trying experience, Fraser, Kowalski, Vecchio and the wolf were to drive back rather than flying, after Fraser was released from the hospital later in the day. But Welsh couldn't wait that long; there was too much paper stacked up on his desk without taking into account the mountain this whole fiasco would generate.

Kowalski agreed to drive Welsh to the nearest airport, an hour away from the small town they'd landed up in overnight. Even though the rental that they would use to drive back to Chicago was no match for the sort of muscle car he'd always loved, Ray was looking forward to the peaceful drive back from delivering Welsh, a chance to be alone on the open road and get his thoughts together. Drinking with Ray Vecchio was a good way to blow off some steam, but nothing compared to the freedom of just driving.

-=-=-

Although Fraser would be released from the hospital in the early afternoon, and the trip back to Chicago would give them time together, Ray Vecchio still felt that he needed to visit his friend and partner while they had a chance to speak alone.

Fraser was sitting up in bed, looking composed, and with much better color in his face than he'd had for the last few, rough, days. He greeted Ray with a warm good morning.

"Hiya, Benny. You look a lot better than you did last night."

Vecchio stood at the end of Fraser's bed, leaning on the railing.

"I feel better. Last night was quite - unsettling." Fraser said. His face was the image of serenity. Only the quick brush of fingertip across eyebrow gave away any sign of how unsettling the events of the night before had been.

"Ray, will you sit down, please?" Fraser asked.

Ray moved almost reluctantly to sit in the chair beside Fraser's hospital bed. He wasn't ready to hear about how upset Fraser was by the death of the bitch. He was very surprised when the topic that Fraser broached had nothing to do with Xu. It was still not an easy topic for him to talk about.

"I just wanted to tell you, Ray." Fraser paused, and Ray noticed that, uncharacteristically, his partner was fidgeting with the thin blue blanket on the bed. "I had time to think last night, and I realized that I never really told you that I was sorry about Irene-"

Ray tried to interrupt, to stop Fraser from going on, but his partner held up his hand, an expression that almost amounted to pleading on his face.

"Please, Ray."

Ray nodded, crossing his arms over his chest defensively.

"I never really made the time to tell you how sorry I was, about Irene, for her own sake. We- things were difficult, I take much of the blame, I know that. But she was a good woman, and she deserved to live a long life. I'm sorry that chance was taken from her."

Ray sighed, his head slipping forward into his hands for a moment. Then he ran his hands over the thinning hair, as if wiping something off. He sat up and leaned closer to the bed.

"That- thank you, Benny. That means a lot. Yeah. She was special. I guess we all lost sight of a lot in there."

Fraser nodded silently. They had all been tied up and tangled up in bonds of rivalry and right and wrong, and the one who held the least blame had suffered.

"She was - we were crazy about each other when we were younger, you know? I mean, Frankie and me, it was always trouble, but Irene, it wasn't just about putting Frankie's nose out of joint. She was this - this mob princess, but they don't - you know, they're old fashioned. They keep the women out of the business, and it never touched her. No one woulda told Irene what her old man did to pay for the dresses, the parties. I couldn't take her away without, without it being like I was the one who tarnished that."

Fraser made a sympathetic sound. He didn't want to interrupt Ray's flow of reminiscence.

"So we got together, we broke up, the whole old star-crossed lovers bit. Then I met someone else, I, uh, Benny, I got married, me."

Ray grinned ruefully at Fraser's surprised face.

"Angie was nothing like Irene. Nothing. She was one of us, law enforcement. One of the good guys, but you know. Tough. Knew the score. Irene was still - living in her little world. Even when she had to face what her family was. Pretending that moving out on her Dad's dime was enough to get the stink of his money off her hands. Angie and me didn't last, but it was good at the start, and I got over Irene. You know."

Fraser nodded, although he couldn't really imagine swapping one passion for another that way.

"I got - I figured - the way things went down with Angie, she - well, who's to say if I made it with Irene instead, we wouldn't have fizzled the same way? Who's to say she wouldn't have resented-? You know, cops and marriage."

Ray shrugged, his posture saying that the last sentence fragment contained all that was to be said on the matter. Fraser thought of all the time his father hadn't been at home. He shied away from thinking about his own loneliness. He could understand Ray's feeling that maybe it wouldn't have worked out with Irene. As eternally optimistic as he was about people, Benton still had no idea how some of them seemed to keep loving relationships functioning for decades.

Now that the painful subject of Irene was out of the way, there was another thing Fraser felt that he had to apologize to Ray for, to set things right.

"I also wanted to tell you. Well." he coughed, and cleared his throat. "I know you think that I was foolish to trust Xu. I can't tell you how sorry I am that you were involved." It was very hard for him to admit that his judgement, his need to trust the best in someone, had been completely wrong. If he didn't have his judgement, what did he have? But he owed it to Ray to set things straight, as difficult as it was.

"You were right. I was wrong." he more or less mumbled.

Ray gave his partner a long look. He was delighted that Fraser hadn't tried to defend Xu's actions. And he knew how much it cost the sometimes stiff-necked Mountie to outright admit that. They had longstanding arguments over much more trivial points. Like if elves made shoes.

Breaking the serious mood, Ray said, "Aww, Benny, you just need to take Dief's lead. Stick with the blondes."

-=-=-

Ray Kowalski took the first leg of driving from the small town back to the main highway that would take them through Michigan and Indiana, back to Illinois. When they hit the highway, he pulled over to a gas station and convenience store so that they could pick up sodas and snacks and stretch their legs. Vecchio picked out a soda quickly, and walked back to the car where Kowalski was topping up the gas tank. Together they watched Fraser through the window of the convenience store. Frobisher must have found a uniform for him somewhere, for he was back in the everyday brown tunic, with his hat clasped between his hands, as he appeared to expound earnestly on some topic with the clerk behind the counter.

"He seemed to have a lid on things pretty good today." Kowalski remarked to Vecchio. In fact, the Mountie seemed to be the one-hundred percent polished surface that he'd first presented at Marco Scardina's dinner table. Way too good to be true, and Ray Kowalski should know, he'd put on the same front more often than he liked to remember.

Vecchio shrugged, an elegant movement of his lean shoulders. "That's Benny. Not the kind to make a fuss over stuff, y'know."

Kowalski gaped, but hid his stunned expression, fidgeting with the cap of the car's gas tank.

"Huh." he said.

"Trust me, Benny's tougher than he looks. He'll be fine."

"Ah." Kowalski concluded. "I'm gonna go get a coke."

He strode away from Vecchio, his own body language giving away nothing.

Not that he'd been insecure, exactly, about how he was supposed to fit in this partnership closer than brothers that he'd heard _all_ about from Vecchio the night before. Not totally insecure. Not, exactly, uncertain enough of his welcome that he was about to tell Welsh the whole thing was a bad idea. But.

Kowalski nodded in greeting at Fraser, who was still occupying the clerk with a precise recounting of the life cycle of, of all things, the common North American bull frog. He strode to the cooler at the back of the store and paused there, staring at the array of sugary drinks.

His place in all this. He could work with Vecchio. Sure, they'd end up slinging insults at each other at least some of the time, but maybe Vecchio needed someone to let off a little steam on like that. Because Vecchio seemed to have the Mountie on a pedestal, and that sure wasn't healthy. Nor was the total con job the Mountie was pulling on Vecchio, and who knows, probably on Welsh. No one walked out of the kind of week Fraser had and didn't need some serious help putting himself back together.

Kowalski nodded decisively, opened the fridge door and grabbed a cold coke. Between him and the wolf, they'd sort things out. It felt damn good to have a job to do.

-=-=-

**Author's Note: That's that! Thanks for reading and thank you to everyone who encouraged and cajoled me to get the monstrous thing written! It's been a pleasure writing for such a responsive audience. I'm a little sad it's over, but mostly ready to move on to other projects!**


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